Bangkok. That's what she said.

Get it? That's what she said? Alright, I know it's lame, but I've been waiting for an age to use it and never got the opportunity. Sue me. Right, so here's what happened and here's how I got/stole the opportunity to come to the weirdest place I've ever been in. I was originally going to go to America and visit my family for the winter holidays. But then two realities smacked me in my grill. (that's slang for face...or maybe mouth, I dont know I'm not that urban). Anyway the first thing was that I had already been home this year for spring break. It just seemed forever ago so I completely forgot. The second thing that hit me was the price of the tickets! So expensive.Not that seeing the only people in the world who I would die for wouldn't be worth the money but come on, twice a year? So because I had already told my family that I was coming I quickly called them and attempted some damage control. Needless to say they didn't love the news of me not coming home, but in retrospect they weren't as broken up about my impending absence as I would have liked them to be. Shady. Side eye to them.

So still Thailand wasn't on the radar at this point. And before I launch into the story about how Thailand actually came to be, let me just say one thing. But before I say that, again I have to say one more thing before that. Sorry, I know it's confusing just try to keep up. The thing that I have to say before the thing that I'm going to say is a disclaimer of sorts. Just please forgive me reader if anything I say in this entire blog is offensive or ignorant or closed minded. I do fancy myself an open minded individual and I try very hard to see the world from the eyes of others but it is a difficult thing to do and I am only human. Also even though I'm really smart and funny and intellectual and cute, sometimes I make mistakes. There. There is the disclaimer and the nasty taste in my mouth. I am going to try to tell my story about Thailand in a sort of objective light but I'm also going to be honest about how Thailand made me feel. The thing I had to say after the disclaimer bit is that I never had any desire to go to Thailand or any Asian country in life. I had a proverbial list with many places I wanted to go, but there were no Asian countries on it. Incidentally there were also no African countries on the list either. Alright so I've said it. I'm not that proud of the list but it's the list all the same. You'll be glad to know that the first nasty mouth taste is now being over taken by the second nasty mouth taste. I do have this to say for myself. Africa is definitely on the list now, for if I survived Asia, Africa should be a cakewalk.


So how did I get here then? Well. How did I come to smoke my first cigarette when I was 15? Peer pressure man. No-one says when they're 14, "Dude. I have a list of shit I want to do when I turn fifteen. I'm gonna smoke up some cancer sticks and look so very cool while doing it." No. Doesn't work that way at all. Here's what happens. You see all the allegedly cool kids getting their life and smoking ciggs and other contraband behind the gym and like a fool you immediately need to get your hands on some. Because after all, you're cool too. Then after your first puff, your throat is constricting, you're panicked and afraid your lungs have turned black, you smell awful and you just know you need chemo. It was a bad idea. But peer pressure is a bitch. Sorry if you're reading this mom. About the ciggs and the profanity. In that order.


So what happens to many expats who live in the Middle East, is that they are earning a bit more money than they were back home, it's tax free, and they usually haven't got any rent to pay. So they decide, naturally, that they should see more parts of the world with some of this extra money. Also, living in the Middle East means that you're relatively closer to more destinations. (as opposed to if you were living in America or Canada, or even Europe and Australia in some cases). So the travel bug hits, right? And so maybe they start out with neighboring Arabic countries like Jordan or Oman. Then they branch out and do a 3 day weekend in Greece or Kenya. Maybe they fly to Sri Lanka over Eid break. They take tons of photos to go with their amazing travel stories. So they're just traveling their little hearts out right? Their conversations include ideas like these. They need new North Face jackets for the upcoming trip to Kashmir. They accidentally left their backpack on a mountain in Kathmandu because they had too much of the local bootleg liquor before they climbed it. (...and other charming travel anecdotes such as this). Oh yeah and please lets don't forget, their precious passports are running out of clean pages, and all these other 1st world difficulties. Yeah. So, you don't want to be left out of the fold. You too could be a world class traveler. You too have a tax free salary and a free apartment. You too have a passport... only yours has tons of empty pages. You must act now! If you don't, what is your life abroad even for? You didn't come here solely to work, did you? You can't run back home to visit mommy and daddy every time you get a holiday break. You too must now go get a NorthFace jacket, those campy little open-toed hiker sandals, and one of those tall, awkward looking backpacks that makes your body tip forward because it's packed to the brim with like, your firestarters and your beef jerky and other stupid outdoor supplies. By the way I hate those backpacks, they make everyone who wears them look stupid, and there's nothing fashionable or cute about them and also they're completely unnecessary. I know this to be true because I backpacked all over Thailand with only an oversized, pewter colored, genuine leather, Marc Jacobs hobo bag. It looked super cute with all my outfits, it carried all the essentials like my iPod, Kindle, eyeliner, Tarte lipstain for a just bitten look, hand sanitizer, wet wipes, (because Thai people happen to not believe in toilet paper or soap, but thats a different part of this blog), and it also has a little pouch inside it that fits my passport perfectly. And for the record, I would never have left my Marc Jacobs bag on any mountain regardless as to how much moonshine I'd drank, because guess what? It was expensive and I think I mentioned before, it goes with everything. How's that for functional, you dreadlocked backpack freaks?


I'm going to take the opportunity now to pull back a bit because I realized that I'm sounding angry and bitter but I absolutely meant everything I said about the backpacks.


Now that I've recovered and I'm back to my usually sunny disposition I will carry on.


Another note about backpacks. Remember that one movie, "Brokedown Palace," with Claire Danes? Loved her in that movie, she was so Bohemian-college-girl-chic. Anyway, so pre-Bangkok, I kept having nightmares about spending the rest of my days in a Thai women's prison like Claire and Kate because some handsome, yet woefully wayward British drug handler named Nick Parsons tried to load my Marc Jacobs bag full of smack, and I had no clue because I was wrecklessly in love with him. Then Kate's dad blamed the whole thing on me, and my slimy hippie lawyer, Hank the Yank just wanted his money and I didn't have any to give him. And also, turns out that Kate is also in love with Nick, so she hates me now too. The Thai girls in the prison kept bullying me and putting dead fish into my sleeping mat. The dream is not original, it's literally a carbon copy of the movie, just replace me with Claire and also I added more sass when I would tell people off in the movie. Also my hair was better than hers…which isn't really a hard thing to achieve because her hair is never really that great on screen or off. Is she so against a few tracks of weave for fullness? All the other starlets in Hollywood are doing it, so it's nothing to be ashamed of Claire. Even in her new series, Homeland, she refuses. Okay, I've gone left. Not the point. But basically the dream was the same. Needless to say, I've been hugging my hobo with a death grip since I entered this country.


It's not that I hated Thailand. Yes, I may have said those very words in one or two heated texts to some friends back home after being taken for a fool one too many times by some enterprising tuk tuk driver, (again another part of the blog), but this statement is not entirely true.  I don't hate Thailand. Do I wish they had less rabid dogs walking on the streets? Sure. Do I cringe at trained child beggars? Yeah. Is it really that impossible to employ one garbage can on an area the size of 6 entire city blocks? Probably not. Could they have any more rats? Don't think so. Still, I didn't hate the place. Thailand has some redeeming qualities. I will share them. In the last tiny paragraph of this blog. Kidding!!!

So my dear friend who I adore more than anything because she's super smart, cute, and brave, in that order, had planned this whole trip to go to Thailand by herself. I should have put brave first. And so one day during our bi-weekly tea link up, I said something like, "Oh you know I can't go to America I've already been there once this year and also the ticket prices are outrageous, even if I use my flier miles it's a ripoff. I should just maybe come to Thailand with you..." What happened during the time between that maybe statement and my booking confirmation number email from the airline is and will remain a total blur... My credit card was out on the table, buttons were pushed on some laptop that I think maybe the waiter brought over...maybe he was in on it.... The tea came and then we were discussing what outfits to bring. And that's how I tricked myself into coming to an unauthorized country that wasn't on my list of authorized countries to travel to.


So we arrive in Bangkok in the middle of the night. The airport is massive, but it's clean. And modern. And that's probably going to be the last time I use either of those adjectives during this blog. I remember that I said I would be objective. I'll start now. Did I already say how nice the airport was? Yes? Okay well.. They had such nice conveyor belts to take you through the terminals so you don't have to walk so much...air conditioner... They had walls.. yep so moving on now. The time was around 2 am, and my Girl Wonder and I were both dead tired from the flight. We stand in immigration line for about 30 to 45 minutes, (which travelers know that this is quick compared to immigration lines at some airports). So, Kudos to the Thai Immigration department in the airport.  See? Me. Objective. We then get our bags and queue up outside for a taxi. They have a sweet system for the taxi queue too. You show the girl at the counter where you're going, she explains it to another guy who then puts you in a taxi and tells the driver in Thai where you're going. He tells them in Thai of course because the drivers are Thai and they speak Thai. Only Thai. I don't know why I was thinking that I would encounter a little more English here in Thailand. Maybe because it's such a touristy place with so many westerners coming here for holiday. It was stupid of me to assume it because they had little to no English skills. You know what? No problem. It's not their job to learn English. I'm in their country, it's my job to learn Thai, right? No problem. Look at me being fair.


About transportation, since I've just touched on it a bit already. There are a few options in Bangkok as well as throughout the country of Thailand itself. I will start with the taxis. The taxis are supposed to be metered. They all have functioning meters inside. They are all commissioned by a taxi authority department. The taxi driver should switch on his meter when you get into his cab and tell him where you want to go. The only exception to this rule is that if you are white, black, western, or just not Thai. 

If you can check one of those boxes you may or may not get the meter turned on. Sometimes you can say, "Sawahdee kah, (hello) I'd like to go to Soy Rambutrii Road." And he may give you a nod and click on the meter. All good. Other times he may say, "250 baht." Mind you, doesn't matter if Soy Rambutrii is a 60 baht trip from where you are. 250 baht is what he's charging. If you give him the stank eye, which is the universal look for bitch please, and/or other "telling off" phrases, he will do one of three things, depending on the kind of day he's had and how big of a douche he is. 1. He may lower the price because he now realizes you're not the huge idiot that he previously thought you to be before you gave him the "bitch please," stank eye. 2. He may ask you how much you're willing to pay him in an effort to barter with you, which effectively assumes that he now thinks you're a medium-sized idiot. 3. He may get irritated that you're not an idiot at all, and slam his foot down on the gas in search of someone who fits his description of a compliant tourist. You obviously don't want a ride tonight and there are more deserving Americans right down the block who won't be so persnickety when he asks them if they'd like to piss away 250 baht on him and his unscrupulous business practices. So that settled, here scooting down the road is your next transpo option. The tuk tuk. Oh the tuktuk. You know what, I'm not even going to hate on the tuktuk. For several reasons, tuk tuk drivers give me life. They are both fun and funny, and the ride is completely stupid and entertaining. Are they charlatans? You betcha. But in my experiences with them they were overall good-natured. What is a tuk tuk? Well, I'll try to explain it just in case you haven't heard of it, but I'll add a picture because they're pretty bizarre. A tuktuk is like a motorcycle with an open-air cart on the back... It's like a motorized rickshaw. It's like... I can't do any better than that, just look at the picture.

You don't have to flag them down like you do a taxi, because there are so many of them that they actually hunt you down and offer you a ride. Nevermind that you're in the market shopping and you want to walk...,"Mees, where going mees? Yes, I take you, come only 100 baht." All the while they have this cheesy yet endearing smile on their face while trying to lure you into this metal-licious deathtrap. You can actually barter with them for your fare, and depending on where you want to go they can be reasonable. There are two types of tuktuk driver. The shady first one will say, "yes, I show you allll of the city for only 5 baht." He's using the huge-sized idiot approach because you have to literally just have landed in Thailand off of a turnip truck if you fall for this one. So start probing him. Say, "Okay, what will I see? Where will you take me?" His response, as he whips out a tourism map of the city will sound a bit like this, "Yes, we go Golden Mountain, very nice this mountain, and I take you to Golden temple, very beautiful this temple, and I take you to souvenir shopping, and I take you to tourism authority center, and I take--,". You: "Wait, what? What tourism authority center? Why?" I'll tell you why. Bangkok, and Thailand in general has built a huge network of tourism businesses where you can go in and buy packages of touristy activities to make your trip allegedly run more smoothly. They offer activities such as elephant trekking, mountain climbing, bungee jumping, and cooking classes. They arrange for you to be picked up and dropped back off at your hotel. These take both the guesswork and legwork out of you having to plan your activities while in the country. So you could literally just fly into Bangkok with no plans, walk into the "tourism authority center," which sounds very official I know, and get booked for your hotels, adventures, entertainment, activities, transportation, shopping, and eating all through the country. All whipped up for you and customized and tailored to you. And you will pay a nice customized price. One of these "tourism authority centers" sits on nearly every corner in many parts of the city. Just walk in and your trip is planned. Although I've heard horror stories that some of them are as shady as the tuktuk driver and that a small percentage of these authority centers have ripped off thousands of baht from unsuspecting medium to large-sized fools. (Sidenote, and also an opportunity for me to display some more diplomacy: Not all of the tourism agencies are criminal minded. We booked bus tickets through one, and my friend was able to easily book tickets to an elephant sanctuary through one. We had no problems.) Oh, and remember the tuktuk driver? What does all this have to do with him? Well. For every medium to large fool he brings to the tourism authority center that he's linked up to, he gets a small kick back of the package that the fools purchase from the tourism authority agent. That explains why your ride through the city was only 5 baht! (5 baht is about .15 cents US.)


Oh and that souvenir shop that the tuktuk driver was going to take you to? Yeah, it belongs to his brother.


The second type of tuktuk driver is likely just trying to eek out an honest living and will charge you the rate reasonable for your destination. No problem. This driver is more rare but they totally exist. Here's a surefire, fool proof way to make sure you get the second type of driver. Stand on road. Wait for tuktuk drivers to approach. If upon talking to them you notice he's the first type of driver, wave your hand in a shooing motion telling him to beat it. Do this approximately 6-8 times and the 9th or 10th tuktuk will be the second type that you're looking for! There now, that only took two hours of your life to hitch a 10 minute ride back to your hotel. Winning. Only you're not.


The third type of inner city transportation that we took was the Skytrain. It's only in Bangkok, not the smaller towns or islands of course. But it's just a subway type of metrorail suspended above the city as opposed to below. Simple. Cheap. Urban. Effective. That's all.

This is the Bangkok Skytrain. It's like a subway train…except over ground. High over ground.
It wasn't difficult to use at all. You walk upstairs and go in the station, use coins at a machine to buy your ticket, slide your ticket into a scanner, and get on the train. Same as any other metro in the world.

So after being in Bangkok for four days and three nights, I wrote this excerpt into my journal while waiting on the bus to take us to Chiangmai:


The harsh white fluorescent lights in the bus terminal flicked off suddenly, leaving the room a dark shade of charcoal grey, with only a gentle wash of the still undecided morning light from the windows to cast visibility in the room. None of the waiting passengers stirred when the lights flicked off, and upon watching them, I thought it reflective of the general attitude of people throughout the city of Bangkok; despondent if not an issue involving baht. Even the time in the market square when the middle aged Thai man held the bright yellow flowers that are ever-so ubiquitous here in one hand and his slightly less yellow penis in the other hand releasing a steady stream of yellow urine into the manicured and flowered lawn, no one so much as sneezed. And oh.... that other time whilst I was walking from nightclub number 2 over to nightclub number 3, a strange, small, girl child ran and jumped surreptitiously into my arms and gave me a huge kiss on the cheek, and I was still in shock when I placed her back on her feet, yet she then demanded 20 baht... Confuse me? My lips curled into a nervous smile and I look around uncomfortably for her absent mother and see only blank non-reactive faces in the scattered sea of club-goers for they too had caught her in their arms without warning tonight too. Thailand is like this. Perhaps the apathy derives from the same place of ideas in which the ever popular t-shirt catch phrase, "This is Thailand" came from.




For four days I've been in Bangkok, and from the first day I pre-decided that it wouldn't be a place I had to re-visit. Sometimes you just know a thing. You're so sure of it. You think you're in absolute hate with a place. But then, what happens after you spend some time getting to know a place, you come to understand it, you learn about why things work the way they do and you have a broader understanding of the culture. Then you love the place! Yes, that totally happens sometimes. This however, was absolutely NOT one of those times. I had walked the city of Bangkok day in and night out for those four days. I carefully sampled certain selections of the dodgy street food that had not known neither an ordinance nor a code. I spoke a broken, limited edition version of English with a few local people. For sobbing out loud, without any regard for my life, I rode in the back of the "tuk tuk." I learned a couple Thai words, (not just food items, mind you) and I partied and club hopped with the ever popular and iconic Thai lady boys. (Who by the way are a ball of magically delicious, trashy fun.) It was all an experience that I wouldn't trade. It does me good to be able to say I visited this part of the world and semi-immersed myself in their world for a time. I'm still pretty sure I've already had enough of Bangkok to last me an eternity.


---


So very long bus and train rides were how we got from city to town to island, and all across Thailand.  These train and bus rides were definitely horrifying to say the least. Now the word horrifying may err on the dramatic, but in my defense, I was either very cold or very hot, uncomfortable, and un-showered. The bathrooms on the trains and bus stations alike were heinous. You pay 3 baht to use the bathrooms at the stations. You walk into them and urine smacks you in the face like an angry baby mama would when you show up without diapers. The floor is always, always wet. You have exactly a 3% success rate of finding toilet paper or soap in any public bathroom all over the entire country, let alone the train station, so good luck with that. Hope you brought your own. And don't even get cute and look for paper towels. Yeah. Right. 

There are these little cafeterias in the transpo stations. The food is never either edible or intelligible. I'm not being ridiculous or picky, or anything like a princess here. Well, there's white rice. And you know that's white rice. But that's the only thing you'll spot with any amount of sureness. Overall, I was not pleased with the entire inter-Thailand travel experience. It's quite funny as I write this because everyone is always so pleased with everything about Thailand. Almost everyone that I know who's gone there absolutely loved everything about the place, and I can't help but think that I am super spoiled rotten and also being kind of snooty and whiny… I tried to be open minded! I tried to experience different things!! I tried. I failed. I need sterile environments. I need food that is distinguishable and preferably cooked in a halal kitchen. Or at least a kitchen with ordinances. If you serve me ground chicken over rice, I do NOT expect there to be bones and feathers in it. I just don't. It's just not what I expect.  (Yes, that happened.) Excuse me for not wanting to eat bones and feathers, I guess I'm a princess for that. Scoff. And I will not be judged by you backpacker types who like to rough it. I believe that while on vacation things should be made easy for you. Someone should come and bring you fresh squeezed juice with a lime and tiny umbrellas and things as such. I do not believe that vacations should be self-imposed hardship. I'm against any form of hardship. Self-imposed or otherwise.

So Bangkok is sort of in the middle of Thailand. We started here because this is where the major Thai airport is. From Bangkok, we caught an allegedly 12 hour bus ride north to Chaing Mai. I say allegedly because there are about 50 stops between Bangkok and Chiang Mai which really make the trip about 14 hours. On the way back from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, we caught a sleeper train. That was my brilliant idea. I thought it would be cool to experience riding the train through the country. (Also, because the ride is like a gazillion hours long, I was excited by the word "sleeper," as I thought we should probably get some of it along the way. Sleep that is.)  I'm glad we did it, actually, because I'd never been on such a train and the experience was an adventure. One that will last me for a while.  Here's another excerpt from a journal entry that I handwrote while on one of the very, very, very, long bus and/or train rides through Thailand.


I haven't been to tons of places in life. This is true. But of the places that I've gone, I've disliked few as I dislike Bangkok. It kind of feels like I got dropped off in a functioning, organized landfill with a metro system for getting you from one pile of shit straight to the second. I like to sometimes fancy myself a writer and somewhat a journalist so I will try not to slander. Everyone who knows me of course knows that I have an exaggerative personality, and I tend to lean toward the dramatic so I'll do my best. I'm actually leaving the town of Chiangmai and returning back to Bangkok. I'm on a train headed there now. 

Chiangmai is... Bangkok turned down low. Real low. Sitting at the north of the country and encased by mountains, it has a small town charm that you appreciate whole heartedly if you've come directly here from Bangkok. The streets are narrow, and only mildly congested. People in Chiangmai are smiling more than those in Bangkok and you have a better chance of not getting ripped off in everyday life transactions here. Which is nice too, because avoiding eye contact, clutching your handbag like a white person in Brooklyn, and looking down at the ground all the time just in case you walk by a open-door policy sex-show with ladies doing unspeakable things with ping pong balls and soda bottles can get real old really fast. Chiangmai is also decidedly less filthy than Bangkok and the food choices are much higher in quality. (

In retrospect, and with all things considered, I preferred Chiangmai the most of all of the places I visited in Thailand. Ironically enough, I have the least to say about Chiangmai right now. Maybe in a later blog…)

Back to this train. It's a sleeping night train more specifically. This train is not like a train in New York that they might call subway or metro or light rail. It's not like the sky train I mentioned earlier. No, this is like a legit choo choo with a conductor who checks your tickets after boarding and departure. I'm feeling very Darjeeling Limited or Slumdog Millionaire except in my iPod earbuds its not "Jai Ho," or M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." It's Jason Aldean, "Big Green Tractor." What? You can take the girl out of Texas...


This train is honestly older than Jesus. If he ever rode on a train this was the one. There is no AC on the train but true to its advertisement, there is a metal fan hanging from the ceiling; rusted, rickety, and reverberating like the propeller of an old Cessna biplane. They really did list that fan in the specs for the advertisement of this train. Honestly, the train is comfortable enough, I suppose. Maybe I just have to keep telling myself this less I lose the last rays of optimism as the sun goes down and I'm stewing in misery for the next 12 hours which is precisely how long it will take this grinding hunk of steel to pull into the City of Squalor itself. Bangkok. I'd already languished away four poverty-soaked days of my life in that miserly hole. I know what you're thinking. Oh Khadijah, that's so rude... Screw you, you weren't there!!!! Objectivism. Out the window. I tried.

On entry to the train, I had spotted two skinny brown cockroaches fleeing the scene in a guilty rush together. They crawled under a little girls seat, and she was none the wiser. I convinced myself later that they had gone back outside just as the train pulled off, but now as I write this, I'm pretty sure they're underneath my pillow getting warmed up for the night's sleep. My skin is crawling. 
The air outside is seeping through the allegedly sealed shut window of my sleeper cell. It is cold, damp and noxious; it smells of petrol fumes, black wet jungle, and animal refuse. It's the stuff tuberculosis and the whooping cough are made of.


The train is all thunderous, metallic claps against the track. It twists and jolts violently across the tracks and I bounce and rock in my 3x3 sleeper cell, the sea foam green, vinyl curtain drawn shut. I hear the hydraulic whistle of the trains' gears, the angry piercing wind infiltrating the poorly sealed window pane, the painful groans of the engine, and a strange jungle animal who is probably, after all this time, still not pleased by the trains' nightly encroachment.


I adjust my long legs on top of what was before dusk my seat back, and wrap and tuck my thin hole-ridden blanket around me. It's no use. Newspaper might be more efficient. My teeth chatter like the rails, and my breath is jagged and smells of sleep. There's 3 more hours to go. Those are the roughest. When I'm on the 17 hour journey by plane to Texas from Abu Dhabi, the entire first 14 hours are manageable. Only just, but manageable. The last 3 or even the last 2, can be a form of torture. The seat on the plane starts to feel even more unbearably rigid and uncomfortable than it actually is. I start getting very hot despite the air con blowing from the vent above my head. Babies everywhere use this time as the official flight soap box. That's what's happening on this train complete with the 6-month old preacher. She's had it and so have I.



This is a picture of the train station. You walk to your platform and you board your car. Antiquated, but surprisingly efficient.

This is what the inside of the sleeper train looks like when everyone has drawn their curtains, the seats have been pulled out and made into beds, and the train is chugging it's way through the jungles of Thailand…..

This is what the train car looks like before the beds have been pulled out. The two seats facing each other pull forward and meet each other. A long cushion is laid out on top of them and then a sheet is fitted over the cushion. Not exactly a Sealy posturpedic, but sleep-able for about a three hour time period.

This guy comes out with his face mask on and it's his job to put your bed together, and make it comfy for you. Comfy is really a relative term… He also shows up in the morning to turn your bed back into a chair. He's no nonsense, non-smiling, and very fast. He can turn down a bed in like ten seconds flat. I hated him.

This, my friends, is the bathroom on the train. State of the art, metal squatter. You can just use your imagination.

I'm ending this blog on Bangkok here. It was not all bad. The shopping for example. So good. So cheap. They practically give you the merchandise for free. More blogs to come on my Thailand experience. I promise I will include lots of positives!!!!
I still have to tell about the night markets, the lady boys, Chiang Mai, and the islands. Lots of good stories. My apologies about the depressing nature of the Bangkok blog, this is the way the city made me feel.