11/15/16 – Chiang Mai, Thailand
Twenty Five hour flight. Arrive Chiang
Mai. Sun sitting on top of thick jungle mush. Go to get room at hotel
that Natalia, the Polish girl I believe I'm in love with that I
haven't seen in 2-3 years, is staying at. No room. She isn't in the
city yet. After twenty minutes of me and reception trying to
communicate reception puts me on the back of her scooter and takes me
to the other hotel. Scoot under low hanging tangles of wires and palm
leaves. Humid as all fuck. Can't check in yet. Walk around tourist
center checking out temples. The detail is outrageous. 711 selling
weird Asian shit. Buy pad thai for one fucking dollar. Check into
hotel. Set my alarm for 6p when Natalia is supposed to arrive. Wake
at 830p with a bunch of messages saying she and her friends are
leaving wifi to go check out the lantern festival. Figure we can run
into each other romantically and coincidentally at lantern festival.
Go to lantern festival. Crowds of Thais and tourists sending pretty
burning trash into sky. Walk for a while. Go to river. People sending
candles in boats made of fruit rines. Bio-degradable trash. No
Natalia.
ATM. No money. Call bank. Bank has
frozen my credit card. Calling from MacDonald's wifi. Attempt 1.
Robot. Clear suspicious charges. Walk to ATM. Doesn't work. 2. Sit on
phone for half hour. Talk to lady. Says it should be fine and to try
more ATMs. Walk to other ATMs. Doesn't work. 3. Sit on phone for half
hour. Talk to lady. She says I need to talk to my bank. I flip out.
Sit on phone for another half hour and talk to bank. She says she
will unfreeze my card but I need to wait until 6am. Fuck you Public
Service Credit Union.
Still no text from Natalia. Walk back
toward hotel. Stop at closed dollar pad thai restaurant for wifi to
check messages. Sitting on curb for a five minutes. Dark face appears
in my face. I'm annoyed. I say “Can I help you?” She says
nothing. She's Natalia. Long embrace. Go for walk. No alcohol served
after midnight. Sit in grassy median strip. Immediately lay in dog
shit. Take off shit. White guy after midnight not wearing a shirt.
Cool. Talk about whatever. She is asking me “Is this weird?” I'm
fine. Something is wrong on her end. Maybe she's twenty six and still
has expectations. Talk for a while more. Invite her back to my hotel.
She says yes. Cuddle. No sex. I roll over on my side of bed. Two to
three years thinking about her, talking to her, intermittently
writing sweet messages, and she doesn't like me anymore. Figures.
Sigh. Pass out.
11/16/16
Wake up. Don't care. Go to some
temples. Go to a thing called “Monk Chat.” Chat with a monk. Some
dumb bitch probably from the Bay Area is across from me asking the
monk questions and before he can finish filling in the rest of what
she thinks he is going to say and then offering her own point of view
about the issue. I ask “what do you meditate about?” and he talks
about how everything is made up of its individual part and our
consciousness is not one single thing and our mind, emotions, and
body are all composed of lots different things and we can separate
those things and isolate the things we don't like and watch those
things and some things are a little easier when you can see it as
something other than yourself. Also I asked him why they don't allow
chicks into one of the temples and he told me because they menstruate
and it creates impure negative energy. You were almost cool,
Buddhism.
I can't remember the rest of the day.
But Natalia was just on her period and thought this was a problem.
Eye roll. Bang. Pass out.
11/17/16
Wake up. Bang. Plan to go to waterfall.
Rent scooters. Five dollars for a day. Tell Polish girls I've ridden
a scooter before. I've never ridden a scooter before. Blast down the
street. Blast into traffic. Weaving in between cars and people and
other scooters all while trying to look at my phone for directions.
Get outside of city. Climb snaked roads upside of mountain with
scenic pull offs. Get to top. Ask for waterfall. Waterfall is back at
bottom. Bomb snaked roads down mountain with scenic pull offs.
Waterfall costs money and is shit. Go to random pull off. Pretty
waterfall with smooth rock pools and lily pond base. Natalia and I
cuddle beside waterfall. I love waterfalls. I love Natalia.
Cruise back to town. Drop other Polish
girl off. Plan to cruise the city and get beers. Stop at bar with
delicious Thai food and drinks. Cruise to another bar with drinks and
geckos. Cruise to a shop to buy booze but one minute after midnight
cut off. Guy tells us bar up the street in weird area. Get to area.
Some guy yells off a different scooter “The bar is there!” I'm so
confused because how does random angel guy know we want bar?
Immediately U-turn and almost kill us both. Maybe a little drunk. Get
beer at sidewalk bar with a few tables. Nice old guy talks for a
while. Hotel. Bang. Pass out.
11/18/16
Wake up. Bang. I run downstairs to find
her some elephant farm or whatever to say whatsup to because she
likes elephants and I love her. Lots of pamphlets with elephants,
ropes courses, and cooking classes. It's like there's a list in
Thailand going around titled “What White People Like” to model
your business after. No ethical elephant farms because she only likes
ethical elephant treatment and I love her. But pamphlet for “The
Grand Canyon” with a sign that's written in Hollywood letters. Rent
scooters for extra day duh. Long hot ride down dusty freeway. Stop at
random market for lunch in the middle of nowhere. Still a bunch of
white people. Get to Grand Canyon. Old quarry with turquoise chemical
water someone put a bar and a gift shop at and turned it into a
tourist attraction. Floated around in chemical water with life jacked
and played with each other's junk under chemical water for a while.
Laid in sun tangled up in each other for a while. Tried to skid stop
on the scooter in the parking lot but the brakes are reversed on a
scooter so almost eat shit.
Go to cat cafe - a cafe full of cats. Run by Japanese guy who speaks no Thai. Cute weird fat faced cats everywhere. Order food. Start with fries. Eat fries with hands. Everything is fine. Polish girl picks up fork to eat. Japanese guy points to rule on wall out of a list of terribly translated to English rules "Do not use fork to eat." We are, extremely confused. I write it off to Japanese culture? Keep eating with hands. Dude is getting more and more pissed explaining fine system to us. We are getting pissed for being threatened at a restaurant. Keep using hands. Guy writes a fine on a piece of paper and puts it on the table. My mind is blown. Natalia is beyond pissed. I'm still trying to be reasonable. We eventually figure out the whole thing is a misunderstanding and "Do not use fork to eat" means "Always use fork to eat." I write the guy a heartfelt apology into a translater, expecting everything will defuse. He is still pissed. I explode and tell the guy to shut the fuck up and give us the fucking check if he wants to see any money. Gives us the check with the fine. We pay the check minus the fine and walk out. I look behind me and he has run out of the building and is latched on to one of the Polish girl's purse. I run at him and grab him by the throat and try to throw him to the ground. Get the purse. He runs back to his cats.
Head back shaken up and in complete shock that I almost killed a cute little Japanese guy in foam flip flops and a pink apron. Pack out of hotel. Go to bus
station. Load up on booze. Board bus. Overnight bus to Bangkok. Huge
reclining seats with neck pillows and personal TVs for $20. Start
drinking. Natalia feels sick. Pass out.
11/19/16 – Bangkok, Thailand
Wake up an hour later. Natalia is
puking in the grossest bus bathroom. Thinks she has food poising. Is
absolutely miserable. Arrive Bangkok. Her polish friends get a room
at some hotel. I have a bunch of nights free stay with a credit at a
nice hotel so take her there. Arrive Holiday Inn. Room on 22nd
floor. Get her a bunch of carbon and shit so she can hold down water.
Hang not doing much for day. Banging is the only thing that makes her
briefly feel better. I oblige. Pass out.
11/20/16
Wake up. Bang. She feels much better.
Bang some more. Get on a boat that is a bus on milk water. Water is
splashing and I'm whining and being a shitty little white person
about it. Get on train. Take train to end of the line. Literally just
a shopping mall the entire way. Nothing good at end of line. Take it
back. Give up trying to find anything authentic and cool and go to
tourist area. Some of the best vegetarian food of my life and
absolutely the cheapest at May Kaidee.
If you were looking to do a
dissertation titled “Tourism, Neocolonialism, and the Plight of
Developing Nations by the Twenty Something Year Old Pseudo-Liberals”
look no further than Khaosan Road. Desperate ladies offering
massages. Super aggressive taxi drivers. Thais asleep at their booths
selling t shirts, pad thai, and fried bugs. Dudes waving nitrous
balloons to hit. Two Nirvana cover bands playing right next to each
other.
Give in, as if there was a choice. Go
to bar with top 40 cover band (I mean, pretty good). Buy a bowl of
booze. Polish girls meet up with us. Get in half hour taxi to find
lady boy show. Club is closed. Go back in cab to other place to find
lady boy show. Costs like $40. No way. Walk around area. I'm bummed
and tired of this repeating street cart and massive dirty humid
sewage air city. Call taxi back to Khaosan tourist area refuge. Buy
booze. Get drunk. This area sucks. Sit down and get more giant beers.
Polish girls depart. Natalia and I pass by a place with live rock
music. Go in. Only Thai people in whole place flipping their shit and
singing along to some band. Band is pretty great and shredding some
cheesy soaring solos. Some Thai guy is feeding me booze and some Thai
girl (or dude?) is literally hanging on both Natalia and I looking
sweetly into our eyes. Try to find an after party but no luck. Head
back to hotel. Bang. I pass out in the middle of banging.
11/21/16
Natalia has a flight at 7pm. Literally
spend the entire day banging. Check out of hotel at 3pm. Polish girls
are supposed to meet her there at 4pm. No Polish girls. Rene meets me
there at 430pm. Still no Polish girls. 5pm finally Polish girls. Rene
has lived here for six years so knows the fastest way to airport.
Throw them on a mototaxi and send them to train stop. Rene and I jump
on the back of two moto bikes and race through rush hour bangkok
traffic (I have my whole pack on). Get the girls on the train. Sudden
but sweet goodbye to Natalia.
Head back to Rene's. Ride his moto
back. Wrong way down head on bangkok rush hour traffic. I'm shitting
my pants. Get to his place in the burbs. Moto through alleys. Almost
fall in an endless pit of water. Don't do much. Pass out.
11/22/16
Wake up with Rene. Moto. Chic cafe with
a pool in the middle of a neighborhood. Temples. River boats.
Walking. Lots of walking. The Great Palace. One year of mourning for
the kind. FEMA refugee camp style. Huge tents, free food, wifi
stations, free bicycles, lots of monk prayer. Tons of people sitting
in black mourning. People loved this king. Truth or propaganda?
Whatever it is, people are united as a country, and that's weird.
