Right now Kevin and I are sitting on Khao San Road drinking Tiger beers. It just finished drizzling a little bit and we are enjoying the 80 degree weather and cold beers. Supposedly November is the coolest month of the year in Thailand.
Here is what we did today: Walked around the area of our earlier Thai residential neighborhood hotel in search of a bank to exchange money. K Excellence is the name of the bank that we found. To the KTM. Like I said, the area that our cabby took us to last nigtht was a Thai residential area and it was somewhat weird but interesting being the only whities for miles. All good.
After we walked around for a while and exchanged our money we took a cab downtown to get a train ticket at the T.A.T (Tourism Authority of Thailand). Place was pretty sweet. They gave us bottled water and held our bags so we could explore Bangkok comfortably. The lady that was booking our train laughed when we said that we wanted a train for that evening, I guess you have to book a day in advance or something but we got lucky and got second class sleepers.
With our tickets to Chiang Mai secured we set our priorities and did the second most important thing we needed to do, get some prescription drugs, which are over the counter here. All in good fun. This is how you get them: walk into the pharmacy and tell the limited English speaking “pharmacist” what is wrong with you, i.e.,
“Ow, my back hurts.”
“Okay, here are some ibuprofen.”
“Noo... it hurts really bad, owwww”
“Okay, here are some muscle relaxants.”
“Score!”
So Kevin got some muscle relaxers for himself and I got some anti-diarrhea tablets. Party time!
After our pharmacy visit we walked around downtown BKK and just tripped out on how different things are here than in the US. Traffic is on the wrong side of the road, tuk tuk drivers constantly assault and harass you to take a ride in their tuk tuk, there are tons of people everywhere trying to sell you something, things like that.
The temperature slowly rose throughout the day by about ten degrees an hour until it hit a very steamy and humid 85 degrees or so by 3:00 PM. We sweated our asses off but it was not altogether unpleasant because after a point you just give up on the idea of keeping your shirt dry and go with the flow. You do get used to it but it definitely adds to the permanent dirty feeling that your body has here.
Anyways, we ended up taking a tuk tuk to Khao San Road where we are at again today, eating some Pad Thai, looking at all the goods for sale, buying some sandals and an authentic Rolex watch (gold) for 600 Baht which is something like 18 US dollars. It’s real.
Now we're chilling until we have to head back to the train station to get on our overnight train to Chiang Mai where we will stay for four days. Peace.
P.S. I found out that 200 Baht is not a good price for sandals. I would later see much higher quality ones for half that price at the mall. The homey that I bought them from acted like it would be insane for him to go below 200 baht (you bargain for everything here).
Here are some things that I am adding as I transcribe my handwritten journal back in the US and remember things:
You don’t actually have to be a licensed pharmacist to give people drugs in Thailand. I would later be given prescription strength ear drops by an eleven year old girl to help with an ear infection. I told here my ear was plugged and she gave me drugs. Am I stupid for just taking any medication that is handed to me or just a trusting person? I don't know but they worked. She must have just been a really young doctor.
Later in this journal I wrote in the margins, “Remember Stewart.” Stewart was an Australian dude that we met on Khao San Road as we were trying to bargain for a tuk tuk to the train station. He had been in Thailand for a while and taught us the true price of things and how you should always make sure that there are no stops in between your destinations. So... Stewart was showing us how to bargain for a tuk tuk, around 70 Baht is a good price, but the problem with taking the time to haggle here was that we were in a hurry to catch our train and he was walking away from Tuk Tuk drivers when they wouldn’t give him a good price. We needed to make it back to the T.A.T. office to pick up our bags before the place closed and hop on the train. It would suck if we went to Chiang Mai without our bags. Anyways, Stewart eventually got us a good price and we chatted with him on the ride, got some advice and learned the ins and outs of being a tourist in Thailand. He was and is like a brother to us.
Another prescription drug note, remember that the prescription “party pills” are bullshit. You will not experience any effect at all from these things other than maybe some permanent life shorting damage to your liver.
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