After spending my summer and fall touring through Europe, it was time for me to go to South East Asia for the first time. I spent almost the whole month of November getting moved out of my apartment and getting everything ready for a extended time on the road.
I left Germany as the Christmas markets were getting set up and the weather was very cold. I took a train to my fiend's house near Frankfurt and spent the night there. Then it was off to the airport.
At the airport I got super lucky. When I checked in for my flight, the person at the counter said "You're tall, would you like a seat with more leg room?". Yes. Yes indeed! I got an awesome seat with more leg room than I could use.
The seat ended up being fortuitous in another way. I ended up making friends with the guy in the yellow shoes next to mine. Him and his girlfriend were staying in Bangkok and we would navigate the airport and train together. A night or two later we met up for drinks.
I've traveled a lot in my life and I've always thought that culture shock was a myth or an excuse for weak-willed homesick people. My first day or two in Thailand was definitely a shock. Not only was every sight, smell, and sound different from anything I'd ever experienced. But I had just left a freezing cold climate and now it was blazing hot with high humidity. I had already grown tired of cities in Europe, and now Bangkok felt like a city cranked up to 11.
My first few days in Thailand were not much fun. It just took me a little time to get acclimated and adjusted to life in Asia. I'm sure Bangkok is a great city, but as my first taste of Asia, I really didn't like it at all.
There are cool things to see and do in Bangkok, but everything just seemed too much to me. I felt like I was having sensory overload.
I went to a pretty cool park that had a ton of big lizards in it. The lizards swim in the water.
At the park I came across my first scammer in Asia. It was a British guy who gave a story about being mugged and losing his passport and asking for money. Maybe his story was legit, but something felt off about him. Too many people have abused that story to take advantage of kind people. I told him I didn't have anything for him.
This statue was blocked by a sign so I couldn't get a good photo. It's a statue of two child kickboxers. It was pretty badass.
The city had some cool buildings and sights, but I was mostly interested in finding places with air conditioning and not a lot of noise.
This super colorful temple was pretty sweet.
At night I met up with the couple that I sat next to on the airplane. We met up at the rooftop bar that was in the movie The Hangover. Normally I wouldn't go to an overpriced bar like this, but it was fun to meet up with the people from my flight.
The next day I let myself get talked into taking a boat tour. It was actually pretty cool.
After my boat tour, I decided to leave Bangkok early. I had planned on staying there for 4 or 5 days, but I left after 2. I really wasn't enjoying the city. It seemed like the only thing to do was hangout in backpacker ghettos and get super drunk with annoying backpackers. I wasn't in the mood for any of that.
I know that Bangkok has a lot more to offer than just that. I also know that it's some people's favorite city. For me, it was just too much all at once. I needed to ease myself into Asia. Bangkok was like jumping into a frozen river. I needed to slowly dip myself in.
So I went to the train station and bought a ticket south. One thing that I really wanted to do in Thailand was get Scuba certified. I had read that Thailand was one of the best and cheapest places to do it. So I headed south to one of the islands.
I had some time to kill until my train departed so I had a beer at a little food stand across from the train station.
Eventually we boarded the sleeper train and started our very long journey. I think the train ride was close to 24 hours. Unfortunately the position of the car that I was in was directly in line for the exhaust of the diesel engines. I was breathing diesel exhaust for the whole trip and I got a little bit sick from it. Even so, it was worth it to get to a more relaxing place than Bangkok.
I hope you'll join me for tomorrow's post where I learned to scuba dive!