Mai Pen Rai!!!

The night Kady arrived, we went for a walk to get something to eat. I had already explored the area to the right so we went left and stumbled upon nothing-ness. We walked past this alley running along some sort of ravine. I recognized that it was the other end of the same alley I'd walked past at least six times that day when trying to work up the nerve to enter the massage place. Being that I'd been in Bangkok a full 18 hours longer than Kady, I most expertly said, "This is a short-cut". And Kady reluctantly followed.

After ten minutes of shuffling along the railing and trying to avoid what Kady said was most certainly human waste, my confidence was faltering. I reached the dead-end and started working out my apology just as Kady said, "What if we get to the end and there's no outlet?".
As we shuffled back and by only six inches missed an explosive expulsion from a pipe of what I now believed to be, for a fact, human waste, Kady said sorry wasn't enough. Just in time for two rats to scurry past us.

(Daytime view of the "shortcut")

We walked on and found ourselves in the market I'd explored that afternoon, a couple hours after closing time.
Young men laughed at us as we weaved in and out of stalls, ducking to avoid hanging pig heads. HOARDS of rats and cockroaches scurried under foot. The rats screeched and screeched and screeched. I watched the placement of each step to avoid the puddles of blood and scurrying rodents, looking up only to make sure Kady had not had a heart attack and fallen over dead.

We ended up skipping dinner after that and tried to wash away the sights we'd seen over $1.25 640mL beers. It must have worked as we would come back the next day and feast for two dollars.


(the grub we got- eating it in our hotel)

That evening we took our first tuktuk ride. We were in awe of our driver as he expertly weaved in and out of congested traffic. Just as Kady was thinking man, they really know the dimensions of their vehicles here, a bus smashed into a brand new Toyota SUV about three feet from my face.



Bangkok is insanely hectic. But our tuktuk driver drove us through this one little neighborhood where I swear time stood still. Hundreds of people were serenely building wreaths from mountains of aromatic flowers. We spoke to one another in whispers.
Turning the corner to our destination- Khoa San Road- felt a little like the twilight zone. What is Khoa San Road? Think: Cancun during spring break, but with really hilarious English translations and way weirder food. It's also pretty much the hub to gain access to most of the things that give Bangkok a seedy reputaion. And the behaviour of the Westeners there is what gives Westeners a bad reputation and, I suppose, funds the seediness of Bangkok. Kady and I hadn't seen many fellow foreigners yet. That's because they were all here.


I won't go into detail about this but this is where I learned, after reading the menu, that the ping pong show all the taxi and tuktuk drivers were touting... had nothing to do with China's beloved past-time. "You should be ashamed of yourself," I said to the man who had showed us the "menu". His face was priceless.

Now don't get me wrong; there was plenty of good clean fun to be had:

We ate grasshoppers. I ate a grub. It was disgusting.

I ate this.


The pad thai guy let Kady toss her noodles in the wok.


A young guy tried to lure us into his bar with the promise that he didn't check id's. Joke's on him.


We briefly flirted with the idea of paying money to have fish eat the dead skin off of our feet.



Through the glass, we scolded this Australian guy who looked at us sort of apologetically, as if to say, "you're right; this is the worst idea ever".



Kady was three months into her travels at this point. I, on the other hand, had been working a menial job for eight hours a day in front of a computer where I would do internet research on Thailand in guilty/sneaky four minute increments.
My favorite bit of "how not to be an idiot foreigner in Thailand" advice was the bit on saving face... not losing your cool... and when in doubt.... just saying "mai pen rai" (no problem/nevermind/no big deal). It is the panacea for misunderstandings or awkward moments. I said this five million times in Thailand. Four million of those times were while Kady haggled with the DVD bootleggers... (more on haggling soon).

At the end of the evening, we hailed a tuktuk back to our hotel. We held out for the same price our hotel had haggled for us and as we hopped in, an old Thai man decided he just scored a free ride. We laughed and gently pushed him out. He got back in. We laughed and pushed him out. He walked around to the other side. We pushed him away with our extended legs.
His face fell into one of horror and disgrace. For two giggling seconds, Kady and I had both forgotten that the supreme, most shaming insult in this part of the world was pointing or raising your foot at someone. It is worse than screaming obscenities. It is worse than "flipping the bird".

"No No no no no no no! Mai pen rai!" I screamed, "My pen rai!!!! My pen rai!!!" I wailed it flailing my arms as the taxi drove away.
"I'm sorry! Mai pen rai!!!!"

Three weeks in to my trip, I now have the details up to my third day posted. You're welcome, America.