Unusually for my overwritten blogs, there's no throughline, contrived argument or pseudo-philosophising here - I just thought I'd get some of my first impressions of Thailand down so I can laugh at my ignorance further down the line, when I'm having a great time jumping off cliffs into clear water or whatever people do here.
And also because I'm too hot to think.
Thailand seems a bit like Egypt, that's as much as I've learned so far from walking around the crooked Bangkok backstreets. Except less noisy and stinky.
My literal first impression stepping off the flight to Bangkok was an unfortunately negative 'ร่วมเพศผม, that cannot be the natural temperature. At 10.30pm, when there's no sun. No, they must have rigged up some unpleasant hot air fan to warm people up after the pleasant plane ride, even though that makes no sense.' You can probably work out which one is depressingly true.
Of course you can, you know Thailand's hot! You're not that ignorant! That's one of the main attractions of it for people setting off on holidays, isn't it? Apart from perverts and paedophiles who presumably have their own agendas (even if they're unsure of the a-gender… no, that doesn't work. I told you, I'm too hot for puns, even of my awful standard). This is just one example of how little preparation I've made for this trip, having become accustomed to things going according to plan. After all, I've made it this far with no real problems - what could possibly go wrong?
The Angel of Death doesn't pay attention to my taunting. He's too busy chasing Oliver.
Nothing has gone wrong so far, and even the quite manky hostel I'm hilariously paying £1.00 per night for (50 baht - that's not the standard rate here, this place is deliberately cheap) is too cheap to be complaint-worthy, even when I'm hot and bothered. Now I just have to get out and explore Bangkok, then work out where the heck to go next week. There are some islands, right? And mistreated elephants knocking about?
A cat on a bar
I should know all this already, having written loads of pages lauding the wonders of Thailand for various websites when I was a copywriter, but because I never really assumed I'd visit any of these exotic places I hardly paid attention. They might as well have been about cloud computing or personal injury claims or whatever else I used to write about when I was caged up in an office, before this wonderful freedom.
A nice, cool office where the fans blow cold air, not warm. I didn't see a single snowflake this winter. After I've been to a rainforest and added another climate to this Sonic the Hedgehog style adventure (because every zone's radically different - I'm not retyping that to make it work), I'll have to get my ass north. Or south. I'm jealous of your winter, Scotland. But I'm sure I'll have a great time here.
