A Place with No Name: Three Surreal Days in a Bangkok Suburb - Bangkok, Thailand

By: J.G.

Yeah, I've been to Bangkok. Who hasn't passed through the giant southeast Asian portal on their way to other more remote destinations? I can't say I've had a beer or stayed the night along Khao San Road. Nor have I seen a glimpse of the Royal Palace. My memories of Thailand don't include elephant rides, hill tribe treks or full moon parties on Koh Pagnan. They glow with bright colors and strange smells.

At the start of a solo sojourn in Thailand, I spent several days in Bangkok. Or at least I think so. With the exception of one day of shopping, however, I never even made it downtown. Instead, I spent my first few days in southeast Asia in one of the cluttered suburbs of the city, a seemingly banal place I could never again navigate my way back to, even if I tried.

As every traveler knows, one's first days in a strange place can never be forgotten. I landed in Bangkok after an overnight trip from Frankfurt. Exiting to a crowd of people trying to pick out loved ones from the throng of arrivals, I scanned the airport for my friend Meredith, who was supposed to be meeting me. Having studied in Chiang Mai the previous year, she had returned for a world religion conference and to visit friends for several weeks. On my way to Nepal to volunteer, I had decided to stop over in Thailand for two weeks.

As I stood in the center of the lobby waiting, I blinked, trying to take in the vivid reality before me and the fact that I was in a completely foreign place. Just as I began to imagine Meredith still sitting on Koh Tao, having forgotten the time of my arrival, she appeared from across the way carrying a small but overloaded backpack, and wearing long men's kahki shorts and sandals. We hugged the way that friends do when they've just come from opposite ends of the world, like people do when they haven't seen each other in years.

Meredith called her friend, Doh, from a pay phone, scrawling some information in the back of her journal as she talked in animated Thai. When she hung up, she said she didn't know exactly where she was going; she led us to the train anyway. As we waited on the platform, the heat began to set in. I was too weary to care about anything, blissful that I had a backpack on my back and three months to myself, entirely free of any obligation.

We took the train several stops and then transferred to a bus. As we bounced down an endless highway, Meredith described her adventures diving with a couple of outlaw fisherman on Koh Tao, and pointed out the lasting effects of the 1997 southeast Asian stock market crash. I lulled in and out, overwhelmed by the humidity and pollution, mesmerized by the crowded street scenes and foreign faces around me.

When we arrived, the house was quiet. We entered a metal front gate and passed through a front walkway, where Meredith instructed me to take off my shoes. After a few minutes, Doh stumbled downstairs, eyes foggy and with a serious case of bedhead. Still yawning, he greeted us with a big smile, offering us a seat on the couch. Doh, whom Meredith called Pi Doh, out of respect for his slightly advanced age, was the older brother of a guy who used to hang out with Meredith's Chiang Mai friends. After Doh's younger brother died in a motorcycle accident a few years before, Doh continued to hang out with his brother's friends. Recently, though, Doh had moved from the north to the south, where he now worked leisurely from his home, spending most of his time hanging out with his friends and girlfriend, and venturing out to Bangkok's various bars and clubs. Doh made us black coffee while we settled into his small home.

Upstairs, there was a small bedroom and bathroom, downstairs, a scarcely-furnish living room, bathroom, and a small front walkway, where a tiny workshop had been set up. Doh's current livelihood was making candles (one gathered he'd done a variety of odd jobs since graduating from university). In the little enclosure between the front gate of the pint-size suburban unit and the glass sliding down, there was a small wooden table, as well as a stove and two metal pots he used for melting and pouring the wax. On this morning, however, the workshop was not in use.

I unpacked my cumbersome backpack, revealing the bottle of French wine and German beer, chocolates and cigarettes I'd brought from Europe as gifts. After providing us with black coffee, Pi Doh tidied up the room with a bamboo broom, snatched a Gauloise and got to business. He stirred the cauldron of hot wax, adding in various colors, taking intermittent puffs on his cigarette to the various mix of popular music spinning in the background. On some days, a middle-aged woman sat at the table, helping pour the wax into the molds and packaging the candles to sell at the market.

Watching Doh work was like watching someone at play - his attention was on each detail and he took his time. This was my first of many encounters with sanuk - the Thai attitude something isn't worth doing unless it is fun. Later during my stay in the north, a new friend clearly explained, while spinning CDs, drinking sang som and hanging out with friends at the bar where he worked, "Work, not work, same same."

The next three days were filled with vivid color and the surreal nature associated only with dreams and one's first visit to a third world country. I ate Thai omelets for the first time and whole fish with Doh and his friend; I was introduced to dirty suburban streets and spirit houses, and I became accustomed to the stares of locals. I enjoyed the sanctuary Doh's flat offered, waking up late in the morning to take a cold shower and drink black coffee, lounging in the afternoon heat. I watched Doh closely as he sat in the living room, light seeping in through the open front door, rolling a joint, and watched as he got up, retied his apron around his waist, and toked leisurely while pouring wax into a row of tiny molds.

We met Doh in the city one night for drinks. Dressed in a shirt he'd bought at one of Chiang Mai's second hand markets, wearing aviator glasses and smoking a clove cigarettes, he greeted us in a manner that said he was ready for a night on the town. The night was filled bumping shoulders at a swanky bar drinking beer, watching strange characters and dancing to electronic music in a small backroom bar, and swirling conversations in the back of a yellow cab.

On our last day, Meredith and I visited Siam Square, where we paid entrance to a new Hollywood movie, sipped Starbucks, and wandered the halls of the giant shopping center. She told me to stand during the national anthem that played before the movie, and taught me about the lady boys on the tram. Pointing to a tall, lanky boy in front of us, she said humorously, "He's not a very good one. He's not even wearing makeup."

As the credits for Pirates of the Carribbean rolled, Johnny Depp's crooked, gold-tooth grin lingering in my mind, we conspired about our desires to be free. "I want to become a pirate," Meredith said. We visited Wat Pho, where I got my first glimpse of a golden Buddha, got massages, and roamed the market at Chatuchak, where Meredith got us the best discounts using her excellent knowledge of Thai.

As we waited at the roadside for the bus, Meredith selected a bag of fresh fruit and sweets for the long ride back to the suburbs. "You have to try everything," she said. Squeezed into a tiny seat at the back of the bus, lurching in the late afternoon traffic, I stared out the dusty window at the jumbled landscape, fingers dripping with coconut milk, the blissful taste of mango lingering on my tongue.

When I think of Bangkok, I think of many things. I think of the lights and the hordes of young people at Khao San Road as I ran to catch my bus to Chiang Mai. I think of beer and laughter, bowls of cheap noodles and crowded streets. I think of my first day at the airport, when I felt lost, and the glow of that last night.

The night before Meredith returned to the U.S. and I left for Chiang Mai to embark on my first solo three-month South Asian trip, there was a small gathering at Pi Doh's. A few guests sat downstairs on the floor, the house enshrouded in shadows, an enormous red candle glowing in the hallway from the downstairs bathroom. Thai voices trilled; Meredith and I conversed softly on one side, facing the others. We savored the last drops of Bordeaux. Pi Doh's girlfriend ate the remaining chocolate, and Pi Doh smoked the last of the cigarettes. The laughter lingered. Sweat gathered at the back of my neck. I tiptoed up the backstairs to take a cool shower. Wrapping myself in a towel, I stood at the mirror. Taking a deep breath, I snipped off my hair. Downstairs, the voices were fading. I heard footsteps as Meredith padded up the stairs. I turned off the light, tiptoeing on the bare floor to the empty bedroom, laying down on the mattress on the floor. Planting my wet head on the pillow, as Meredith whispered "Good Night," I put the last of my worries aside and drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow would begin the real journey.