Don't Forget Your Guidebook

The Arrival

The Arrival

Bangkok immigration looked like a giant, sterile VD clinic. Queues of humanity from all corners of the globe were all lining up up to be processed. A wonderful welcome to the land of a thousand smiles. Not that I wanted the little pudgy Thai men in their seriously too tight uniforms smiling at me for any reason other than to say move on. For the record, they didn’t even say that. It was just a swift head nod to get moving along the queue.

After our ‘processing’, it was all quite easy. We knew where we were going. Kao San Road. An iconic road in the centre of Bangkok made famous by years of international travellers that stayed there on their way through South East Asia. It was also the only proper place in Bangkok that travellers hung out at, according to my research.

“Which way then?” asked Anne, looking around the arrivals area.

Anne, who had kept her nose in a book for most of the flight, was at least looking at me for directions now we had arrived.

I stared at the map on my phone. The words ‘Connection Error’ were running across the centre of the screen. Knowing where you are going is a lot easier when you’re not standing in a sea of humanity, with no Wi-Fi, and two green-eyes boring holes into your soul. I had a simple way out of this.

“I think we should take a taxi ...”

“What?” barked Anne. “I thought you had all this figured out. Knew the exact routes of everywhere we’re staying at down to the last bus stop?” She finished with a defiant stance. “No taxis, we’re on a budget, remember?”

“It’s our first day here. I thought we’d take it easy.” A blatant lie. My phone couldn’t connect to any network to give me answers. And while the free Wi-Fi connection had a signal, there was no actual internet connection. I could only remember something about taking the train to ... shwarhoburi or something.

“You’re paying if we are taking a taxi.”

“There’s a bus,” I retorted. “I remember there’s a bus.”

“Where?”

“To Kao San Ro...”

“I know that ... where does the bus leave from?”

My backpack’s left strap slipped off my shoulder and slapped to the ground, sending a small Thai lady jumping back. She scowled at me with disdain. Again, a charming welcome to Thailand.

“There’s a tourist counter over there,” snapped Anne, storming over to a glass cubicle covered in 'Amazing Thailand' posters.

I stood stranded on the island that was our gleaming new backpacks in the middle of Bangkok’s arrivals area. All four backpacks were new and filled to maximum capacity. One contained at least one-third of Anne’s wardrobe. The other contained my clothes plus Anne’s makeup kit, hairdryer, and whatever else she deemed essential. Then two daypacks. Mine was at least full of my own essentials of my laptop, mobile backup that my mum had given me in case of emergencies, guidebook printouts, and allergy medicine that once again my mum had given me. Anne’s daypack contained ... Well, more make-up, I’m guessing. I'm not sure, really, as she wouldn’t tell me. She came back just as I’d put my bags on and was wondering how her bag could only weigh twenty kilos, as it was a struggle to lift it.

“There,” Anne said, pointing to a big red X on a glossy map she now possessed. “A shuttle bus leaves from here every hour. Not hard.”

“Where’s ‘here?’” I said, reaching out for the map.

“Here!” The map was shaken at me, then pushed into her daypack.

“Where’s my map?”

“Get your own.”

I looked over at the tourist information desk as Anne stormed off down one of the shiny, generic corridors. I was being deserted already. All this just to get her back. I was an i***t to think this trip would work. I had to try, though. Things used to be so good between us. We were best friends. She was my first love. Well, again, there's that word. I think it was love. There was no one else before. Well, nothing serious. Anne and I had a serious relationship. Granted, it was clandestine. But all the same, we'd had a great time together, once. If that’s not worth fighting for, I don’t know what is.

✳✳✳

They crammed the shuttle bus full of tourists, locals and various random teenagers, all staring at phones. I stared at mine. It still had no internet connection. Were they all just faking it, too? Anne was sitting at the far end, reading the glossy tourist brochure and refusing to make eye contact with me. I’d elected to stay by our bags near the main luggage rack. It was a clear demotion from chief navigator, but a lack of Wi-Fi was clearly not my fault.

We hurtled through Bangkok, I think. I couldn’t see anything except for people in the bus who blocked the view. This was not good for navigation. All the same, Anne did have a window seat. Not that she seemed inclined to help. I remained calm and thought about what I’d read about the bus trip. It would leave as at the top of Kao San Road on its last stop. It couldn’t go wrong. And it didn’t. After forty-five minutes the bus stopped and the driver shouted out ‘Kao San’ twice.

The doors swung open and a mass of people both exited the bus and swarmed around the doorway outside. Various hands reached out towards the luggage rack. I gripped tightly onto our bags’ straps with both hands. The straps cut into my fingers as something quite horrible washed over my body and into my lungs. Thick hot humid pungent Thai air.

With Anne finally taking her bags from me without so much as a thank you, we exited the bus.

“You wan’ rooooom?”

“Come, take rooooom?”

People surrounded us. Some had no teeth. Some had glossy white teeth. Every one of them was shouting. And then there was the heat. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, other than a sauna. A huge mouldy, unwashed sauna heated with coals of turd and toilet water. It stuck to my skin instantly.

The myriad of locals holding up handwritten hotel signs and glossy brochures all waved frantically at us as we tried to move to the footpath. I felt like prey. They pointed at us repeatedly, then back to the brochures badly spelt highlights and blurry reproduced photographs of rooms with enormous beds. The noise was equally bewildering. A cacophony of broken English and Thai that repeated something about “Saw a Dee” or something inaudible. It was horrible and nothing like the guidebook printouts said it would be like.

Anne ploughed her way over to the doorway of a 7-11 corner store with one tout in tow. She was staring at the glossy map from the airport brochure as if I didn’t exist. The store door slid open automatically and made a unique bing-bong sound. A waft of cool air blew out before the door slid shut and I was consumed by hot, unwashed sauna air again.

“You English, right?”

A small boy with a torn t-shirt looked up at me with a wide grin.

“I like marmalade an’ toast!” he beamed in a strange Oliver Twist style of English.

“English, rrriiight?” he repeated with an all knowing grin.

“Yea,” I blurted, pulling my backpack on whilst clutching at my daypack in fear of little hands going into it.

“London? Birrrrminghammm? Issssliiingon?”

“No, Oxford?” I said, looking past the boy. There was an old Thai lady behind him staring holes into my head by the side of the road. She didn’t look happy to see us behind her table of what looked like lottery tickets.

The 7-11 door slid open again. Bing Bong. The cool air was an instant relief for all of 4 seconds before the door slid shut again.

“Rowing, you like to row, mate? Beat Cambridge again, did you, mate?”

“How ... what?” I couldn’t quite comprehend how the small Thai boy could (a) speak with a cockney accent and still mispronounce things. (b) knew about Oxford rowing. (c) why he was telling me all this.

“Jonny??”

It was Anne. She was glaring over at me from beside the old lady’s table. I moved closer to her, only to get a look of death from the old lady.

“CHAW CHAW MY HINNI!” squawked the old lady as she pointed angrily at me. Was she cursing me? I’d only just arrived.

Bing-Bong went the door.

I moved away from the old lady’s pointing finger and stood over a metal grill on the footpath. Impossibly, it was bellowing out a constant stream of hot air. Only this heat had the sickly odor of moist sewer. Was the entire city like this? One giant bellow of fetid heat!

Bing-Bong.

A customer entered the 7-11. I was now too far away to feel the blast of cold air. The old lady started shouting about me to another old lady further down the road. The sewer heat smell changed to something rancid as it thundered up from the metal grill beneath me. None of this was in the guidebook. None of it.

“Missssta, I help,” the young boy began tugging at my daypack.

“No!” I grabbed it back. “It’s got my laptop in there.”

I honestly regretted blurting that out. I took a mental note never to do it again.

“Yea sure,” nodded the boy. “You want a room with Wi-Fi and double bed with you girlfriend.”

“Jonny, come on!” scowled Anne as she stomped across the footpath.

Shaking my head at the boy, I hugged my bags tighter and followed Anne across the road past a throng of Australians in tank tops. It was a bizarre sight. They were all wearing an assortment of wild afro style wigs whilst most carried small cans of beer in each hand. Where the hell was I?

Kao San Road. The most popular backpacker hang-out in all of South East Asia. Well, at least one road was Kao San. There were several roads at the intersection where we were crossing, but I couldn’t quite see any street signs pointing to the actual Kao San Road. Again, none of this was in the guidebook. All I knew was that I was now feeling decidedly ill from the hideous smells engulfing me and the amount of sweat I was producing just from a short walk.

“Jonny,” glared Anne once we’d crossed over. “Do you know where this Cherry Inn is exactly, or not?”

I dropped my day pack onto my feet. “I need a drink.”

“For f**k’s sake Jonny, let’s get to the hostel first!”

“It’s off Soi 11 ... I think,” from what I remember from the online booking form, anyway. Not that they had any street signs in Bangkok to make it easier.

“Cherry’s bad matey, no Wi-Fi?”

Anne stared down at the small boy who’d followed us over. Then she looked up at me and shook her head disapprovingly.

“It’s okay,” she said, looking at the boy with one of her forced smiles. Beads of humid, enforced sweat formed on her brow. “We’ve a reservation there.”

The boy turned his smile upside down in a theatrical gesture. “No good, no Wi-Fi. An’ is a full one hour ago. Lots walk-in customer.”

“What? It’s full?” I blurted.

“Yea, I show you Sao La Lodge. Good price.”

I looked at Anne. She looked back at me with less contempt and with a hint of confusion.

“Young man,” she said with a stern, but kind smile. “Are you quite sure?”

The boy put his hands on his hips and pushed out his cheeks with air. Anne laughed, and the boy broke out into a big smile.

“You are a nice lady,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Why thank you,” replied Anne. “It’s nice to have a proper gentleman around here who knows his way around.”

“It’s a good place,” beamed the boy. “Honest.”

Bing-Bong.

The 7-11 across the road never shut up. Why was the noise even necessary? Did the staff really need a noise to know when someone walked in? Or just walked by outside close enough to set the sensor off? Could they not adjust it slightly?

The old lady was no longer glaring at me. My shirt had now changed from light green to dark green. I physically felt like the remaining liquid inside me had evaporated. Strangely, sweating made no difference to how hot I felt. In fact, it made me feel worse. Everything I wore was now sticking to me and making me feel like a hot, soggy toilet roll. How could people live like this? This was not normal. Not normal at all. None of this was in the guidebook photocopies. We needed to get out of here, fast.

“No harm in looking at his place?” I suggested in desperation.

“Not far,” the boy started again. “Just around corner, good Wi-Fi. Very clean. Very Niiccce. Commmeeee on.”

“We can just take a look?” I urged. “Surely they had to have air-conditioning? We could just sit in reception and plan out what to do.”

Anne shrugged. That meant yes.

Maybe, just maybe, if I could get this right, all would be well with the world again. And maybe Anne would forgive me.

Chapter 2