From Bangkok to Hua Hin
Describing slight mental breakdowns via blog post is slightly intimidating, yet liberating. I can not emphasize with enough horrifying adjectives how insane Thailand really is. I traveled here with a certain idea of how I would adapt, from the amazing food I couldn’t wait to encounter to the countless friends forced upon me by going through Xplore Asia. All I can say is how different coming here really is and will be, but I am up for the challenge.
I stayed in Bangkok my first three nights here alone. I was supposed to have someone in the hotel room with me, but some sort of confusion and/or disorganization on behalf of my program left me alone, with only 50 pounds of luggage and a backpack to call roommates. I suppose this led to the first three terrifying nights I stayed there, in a room with no windows and, of course, no people. This made meeting others that much more intimidating, having to seemingly roam around the hotel until I ran into someone because I couldn’t connect to the Internet either. I went out Saturday night with a few girls from South Africa, the U.S. and a handful of Canadians. There were a bunch of people from our program out on Khao San Road. It is fairly known for being full of foreigners. There were food vendors lining the streets, an overwhelmingly amount of people trying to sell pointless goods and, of course, ping pong shows. I won’t go into detail as to what these actually are, although I assume many of you reading this may already have an idea. If you don’t, Google it. Either way, the bars were incredibly fun yet intimidating, and I found myself so scared in some places I was shaking. Needless to say, Bangkok did not swallow me whole and I survived a night out in the city.
On Monday morning, the lot of us left for Hua Hin, a city about two hours south of Bangkok. I was, at the very least, ecstatic to leave the city but feel the need to go back in the near future when I get my bearings. Hua Hin is beautiful. My hotel room overlooks mountains, the ocean is just a ten minute drive from me and the people are so incredibly nice it hurts. Never in the U.S. could a foreigner practice their English on someone working in customer service without receiving either a confused look or rude backlash, not having the time or patience to try and understand. At almost every restaurant, 7-Eleven (which are huge here) and food stands I find myself venturing to, every Thai person has greeted my broken language attempts with smiles and laughter, all the while correcting me and praising me for my efforts. It has been incredibly helpful as I try to learn this very difficult language.
I have also since made my first Thai friends at a club just down the road from me. One was a mother who I believe was about 50-years-old. She told me I reminded her of her daughter, and hence forth I have adopted my new club mom. She kept trying to set me up with numerous Thai men around the club who could not understand a word I was saying. In other words, she was awesome. I even got her cell phone number!
Besides making more than a handful of friends from around the world, I have fed elephants, avoided jellyfish, ran from stray dogs I thought to be rabid, meditated in a temple, received a blessing from a very modern monk (his Facebook messenger kept going off while he taught us about Buddhism), been giving a whole bottle of Skyy vodka simply for being woman, seen the most extreme poverty and beauty in the same place and have stood on the back of buses with no seatbelt in sight (sorry mom). I have seen children and babies ride on mopeds with up to four people on them, covering their eyes and mouth to avoid the exhaust from the song tau I stood on the back of.
I have resisted embracing squat toilets, bum guns (a hose of sorts in place of toilet paper) and have physically rejected the heat. Every inch of my body is covered in sweat at any given moment, and just this past Friday I had to leave my Thai speaking class because I thought I would pass out. I have thrown up and been sick more times than I can count since I have been here and have been eating peanut butter, bananas, rice and bread in hopes of fixing this problem.
Two people from my group alone have been to the hospital (there are multiple groups in the same program), one of which is returning to the U.S. soon enough to have surgery on his back for some reason unbeknownst to me, the other suffering from what the doctors think to be a bacterial infection. Another man in our group is in the hospital with feet swollen bigger than pineapples. Two women in the program were robbed in a back alley on the way back from the bars. Another girl was pulled down by a man on a street bike in an attempt to get her bag and has horrible road rash along her shoulder and arm. A guy in my group was awoken at 12 p.m. one night by three Thai men offering only one piece of cake on a plate (make of that what you will). The reasoning behind that one is still unknown. But the worst thing to have happened, by far, was when a group of us were at a local bar in Hua Hin having a couple beers. A handful of us, including myself, left at around 11 p.m. as we had an early start the next day. Had we left only thirty minutes later, we would’ve seen two men on motorbikes crash into each other right in front of the bar. A large number of the people in our group watched one, possibly two, men die right in front of them that night. Many of the members were in shock the next day, trying to make sense of what they had seen. I try to remind myself that bad things happen everywhere, but I find myself on edge and holding my bag clenched fists wherever I go.
On a much lighter note, I have become so close with the people in my program. They are all so carefree, optimistic of their futures here in Thailand and so refreshing to be around. Never a day goes by that we are not in search of a new market, a new restaurant or area in general to find and explore. Never in my life have I felt so uncomfortable in such a meaningful way. When I think about some of the problems I have faced previously before coming here, I am honestly disappointed to have thought they were problems at all. I hope some of you reading this will also reevaluate what it means to truly suffer and remember that things could be so much worse. It is this that keeps me going. Learning English for these children is one way they can become a middle class citizen, a status I have taken for granted all of my life. In my TESOL class, I have learned that children coming to class are oftentimes distracted simply because they are hungry.
I have so much more to learn and still have not adapted as best as I would like, but I believe we learn of our placements this week and am so excited to see where this will continue to take me.
