Gutted and angry. Gutted that all the plans and excitement about future travels in India are being put on indefinite hold. Angry at myself that I could have cocked up in such a monumental fashion. I could analyse it incessantly to try and figure out how I managed to make such a cataclysmic school boy error but in the end it wouldn’t really matter. I have made a lot of mistakes over the years and in the grand scheme of things this one seems pretty irrelevant. Now, almost two weeks later it is even slightly humourous.
The snap decision is made to go to Bangkok, not that we want to go there, only that it is cheap and gives us plenty of options for getting to other places. So I am here against my will, forced to remain in a city I have no real interest in whilst onward visas are processed and plane tickets purchased. As a result my view is totally biased, skewed to that of manic depressive perhaps, so I apologise in advance for those of you who love this place.
Bangkok. Immortalised in Alex Garlands “The Beach” and famed in equal measures for its mysterious exotica and salubrious erotica. All of the following certainly apply: noisy, polluted, stinking, hideous traffic jams and scooters on pavements. These are not necessarily negative, indeed, I would happily say all of that about Kathmandu, one of my favourite places in asia. The rabbit hole goes much deeper however. Every western bloke here seems to have a Thai girlfriend on his arm, as economic migrants move to the west romantic migrants move to the east. The sheer number of couples like this, usually massively imbalanced in terms of age and aesthetics (you can figure out for yourself which way this scale slides) has got to get you wondering, this isn’t the result of the standard holiday romances surely, this is a phenomenon of overwhelming statistics. Somebody must be writing a PhD thesis on this, incredible!
Then there are the single, older, western guys with lecherous grins that hang out in the cafes and bars waiting for the clubs to open, clubs with names like Venus, Honey or Hotmale… depending on preferences. A dramatically obvious side of this country not shown on the “Amazing Thailand” tourism adverts...
The Khao San Road is a hodge podge of pirate DVD stalls, tattoos, tacky comedy t-shirts, dreadlocks, wide boy stares, piercings, the inelegantly wasted stares on the great unwashed and bars that spill out onto the street and hoover up the detritus of last nights excesses with crap music, awful food, and hair of the dog beers as it all winds up to yet another debauched night of westerners behaving badly en masse in a foreign country.
Cheap booze, drugs, sex, beaches and surgical procedures are all up for grabs here and I feel totally and utterly out of place. This is their party and I am not on the guest list. One wrong turn and we end up here in this Hotel California of a backpackers limbo. Where’s that eject button?
Aha, passports stamped with visas and plane tickets in hand, winner, where are we off? Bangladesh. Why? Whilst searching for a silver lining to this whole spiraling mess several options rose to the surface. Bangladesh however, a place I never had any intention of visiting managed to escape the soup and take flight.
2 weeks ago I knew nothing about Bangladesh, now I know next to nothing but I am very keen to find out more. I am filled with a deep sense of adventure, it’s closely guarded secrets promise a wild and unpredictable journey far off the backpackers circuit, an explorers paradise. Indiana Jones, Robert Capa and Hunter S Thompson vie for attention in my wildly racing imagination. This unplanned excursion might well end up being the highlight of our trip, but who knows, only the next month holds the answer to that.
Buy the ticket… take the ride!
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