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giovedì 31 maggio 2018

Thailand On My Own Day 1: Bangkok




I’d like to skip the whole bit where I get told at the airport there is a 50% chance I’ll get sent back home and won’t pass Thai immigration borders because of the conditions of my passport. I’d like to also skip the fact that I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Breathe, Your Name, Thank You For Your Service, The Killing of a Secret Deer, and started Coco all in one trip. 
Let’s get to Bangkok straight away, shall we?

I manage - you guessed it - to pass the border and enter the Country. It is hot, like proper hot. That hot that sticks to your skin and clothes and breath. Actually no, breathing is difficult because the air is still and very warm. It feels like trying to inhale a soup. I don’t realise any of this until I am on the Subway, but as soon as I get out I realise how strong the Air Conditioning must have been in the carriage. I am a silly idiot, therefore I am still wearing long jeans and a rather tight t-shirt, which translate to death via sweat. 

Finding the hostel is a quest. All the roads are packed in traffic jams, motorbikes and tuk-tuks trying to smuggle their way around cars. Crossing the roads is more of a conscious walk towards death every time than a well-thought act. I still don’t get how to cross. I feel like you have to impose your crossing and hope people will stop (or worst case scenario just honk).  
The smell in the air is continuously different and very strong.  Food, sweat, people, flowers, sewage, fruit and cement all keep coming at you in a matter of meters from each other. 

I manage to get to the hostel - where the AC is indeed blasting at max power - and get told I can check-in in an hour. I drop my luggage in a not-very-secured “Staff (not really) only” room and head out again to check out Lumpini Park. 


Bangkok is… really something. At first sight it seemed - from the airport train - like a mixture of modern and expensive with old and poor, but when you are actually walking in it it feels even odder. I cannot begin to express how it feels to be walking around. In the main roads and  market everywhere feels packed, people are talking and shouting and the heat is unbearable. I am that kind of person who will always carry her backpack with her but with this heat it means all my back and shoulders get drenched in sweat. Along with the rest of my chest and face, let’s be honest. Very Attractive. 
Lumpini Park is rather peaceful when I go, but the heat of noon makes it a rather treacherous experience. I am sweating, people stare and the lens of my camera has condensation on it for the warmth. I learn straight away to always have water with me. TIP: Unfortunately, in Thailand tap water is not advisable especially for Western stomachs, therefore you always have to buy a bottle. At 7/11 you can get some for 7 Bahts which is  basically 20p, so it’s not too expensive. Even for brushing your teeth and washing food it’s not advisable. I learnt to be careful with choosing ice and fruit and check at stall markets and fruit stalls that they use gloves and the health and safety conditions are at least bearable. The last think I want to do is get sick on a holiday by myself, I’ll be honest. 

I check in at the hostel, settle down in my bed, get changed from my soaked clothes and I decide to head out. I’m wearing a floaty t-shirt and a very floaty maxi skirt this time, I learnt from my mistakes. And I am hungry. Oh, boy, I am hungry. 

I have to quickly learn Vegan culture is not really a  culture at all in Thailand. Most food - I am literally talking almost all of it - somehow includes fish or meat. The vegetarian options are few, not in many places, and use eggs. I managed so far to find places suitable, but being Vegan is proving to be hard sometimes. Especially, I haven’t found a street food stall yet that can fit my needs (or that looks like it). So far I managed to eat Pad Thais, Noodles with vegetables, Vegetable stir-fry, I even managed to go to a Veganerie place where I got a Peanut Sauce and Tofu salady-thingy that was bloody great. I will probably be back to get a slice of Carrot Cake as I haven’t had one in years…


I decide as of my first day I should probably go and visit the
Grand Palace and start from there to see where I can go. You know usually on my holidays I mainly walk around, it’s my favourite thing to do to actually live and explore the place and feel part of it. Also, let’s say it, I like saving money. I like that a lot. 

Get to The Grand Palace via public transport would take an hour - plus understanding bus stops written in Thai would be… interesting - so I try to get a Taxi. I think I still quite don’t get how to call them, I guess you might have to find a waiting one. So I get approached by a Tuk-Tuk driver which, I’ll be honest, I am not that interested in. I know Tuk-Tuks are more expensive than taxis and also being in the middle of the traffic jam breathing the smoke coming out from the car is not really on my wish list. We fight on the price and eventually I manage to get a pretty good deal seen the distance, and I hop on with the promise to stop once to one of his “sponsors” and pretend to be interested in their products while browsing around. I agree and we get there. It’s a tailor. I get in and while I am browsing a very rude employee asks me to tell me specifically what I want as there is no browsing since everything is tailor-made. So I get out.

My journey is full of honking, speeding, breathing horrible gases, but we eventually get to interesting areas of town and speeding around backstreets we drive through a busy and hectic Chinatown scattered with markets, watchmakers and signs of all sorts. Passed that we get close to the Grand Palace where I get down. I manage to find the entrance and I am tempted to buy some floaty trousers for 100 Baht for the next days but I restrain myself. Once inside, the atmosphere is unbelievable. The architecture is like nothing I have experienced in the West before, and I cannot stop looking at the walls and colours and shapes. It’s incredibly beautiful. (Aside from the bunch of  tourists shouting to get a picture in front of it. Tourism in this city is insane.) 

I decide to walk (you don’t say) somewhere with the intent to get closer to my hostel and then get a Taxi as the distance is pretty… big. I end up walking in in random temples. 
TIP: leave your shoes outside with everyone else’s, walk inside and try not to give your back to the Buddha. A monk will be there and there will be people burning flower garlands and incense actually worshipping. Don’t get in the way. Photos are okay, selfies are not (use common sense). Also, don’t steal someone else’s shoes, that’s not nice. I know you thought of that.

Walking and walking, the streets I’m going through are absolutely invaded by Buddha shops. All sorts of Buddhas, all sizes, all colours. Repeated. For miles. I keep walking and reach Chinatown - how did I walk all the way there without being run over I have no idea - where people are everywhere and shops of every kind occupy the sidewalks. I avoided buying fruit from the stalls, scared as I am of germs - I know, I’m sorry - but I am really fancying a mango by that time. At some point, on a side street, I find a hidden market street. Stalls are crowding it both sides and I get in to see what I can find. It turns out to be long. So long. And with so so so many stalls! Food, fruit, crafts, jewellery, clothes, nuts, berries, rows and rows of typical products, beans, spices, tea… It feels never-ending and I absolutely loved it. 

Somehow, from there, I walk all the way home. With 30,000 steps in a day. I never stop. I know. I manage to find a nice place where to eat a mixture of stir fried vegetables and    noodles. I really need it. 

To stop my mango craving I get one from a supermarket - yes you heard me a SUPERMARKET - I find. There I can get some mixed nuts, cereal and milk for the morning as Thailand doesn’t really have a specific breakfast. Normally they eat as any other meal. 

After that I have a bit of a night walk - I say night walk, it’s like 7.30pm but I am absolutely shattered and it is dark so leave it. There are way more people at night in the streets - and there were many already during the day. People come out as the heat is ever so slightly more bearable. I wouldn’t understand why there were so many night markets to see, I wondered why having all of those at night. The lights? The atmosphere? No, it’s genuinely the heat. 

Walking I end up in Patpong Night Market where it is famous for the nightlife and being the red light district. I mean, I wanted to avoid that area but my hostel was literally behind it so I might as well give it a look. The market is lovely and it’s interesting to see something like 10 bars in a row all advertising female lap dancers. It’s not hard to see inside either as the doors are wide open. Most dancers - perhaps as it was early - were barely dancing on the tables. I don’t know how I feel, passing by. It’s always a grey area. I would want to go inside and see. See what it is and how it works. I often wonder about the ethics of that sort of entertainment in a country like Thailand. 

I go home, at last. I was planning on reading on being on my phone a bit but after basically 3 days without sleep I collapse for 13 hours.

See you tomorrow for the second day of the adventure!


Ellie

domenica 29 aprile 2018

Twirling Snowflakes (short pointless story while walking in London)




The night descends first slowly and then all of a sudden on the small London park. It’s not even really a park, but more of a slice of green, trees and benches in the middle of the crowded City. But it is peaceful. You can look up and among the annoying streetlights count a handful of stars in the never-pitch-black sky. I sit down on the bench and the sudden feel of the cold wood on my skin makes me shudder. I put my hands in my pockets and bury my head in my scarf while a cloud of  condensation forms outside my mouth like crystallised air. It’s oddly silent for being a random London night. Sometimes the muffled sound of cars rushing by to bring their owners home breaks through the air, but between my hat and the hood I can barely hear it. 

I am not entirely sure why I made it all the way to that bit of green. I am not even sure I am dressed warm enough to be outside there. I look around me and the only living thing in the ray of a-hundred meters is a dog, quietly peeing on a tree and looking at me, tilting his head with curiosity. I smile subconsciously and look up at the polluted sky. I am so used to not being able to properly see the stars, but still in the middle of my chest there is the echo of a pain that springs from the core of it and expands to all my limbs. Just under the spot I am looking at a window lights up at the top of a victorian building. The light is tungsten looking and it allows me to see what’s happening from my corner of darkness. Two kids are running around in the room while their parents try playfully to catch them. It looks nice. They disappear from my sight inside the room and then come back, laughing and happy. It’s the kind of feeling that warms you up in a Winter night. I can’t help but imagining how it would be for me to be there with them and having as much fun as they have. Why am I even thinking that? 

The younger kid gets into the arms of what I want to think is his dad and he lifts him up to look outside of the window where - I slowly come to realise - it has started to snow. They look at the snowflakes cascading from the sky, dancing and twirling in the cold British wind. The kid screams in delight and his dad quickly gestures him not to do that, as it’s late and their neighbours might be asleep. The other kid comes to the window too, just about tall enough to be able to see out of the window. His head pokes out of the bottom of the glass and he seems to be silenced by a deep feeling of wonder, as if the snow is the most beautiful things he has ever seen. Sometimes I miss feeling the spark of wonder and marvel that comes from new things. Easy things. Random events that just happen in your everyday life but that for some reason feel wonderful. 

The kid asks a question to his father and for a split second I wonder why I haven’t actually seen their mother yet. Maybe she’s at work as he took a late shift, or maybe she’s sleeping and that’s the reason why the father was miming the kid not to scream. Or maybe, just maybe and the thought quickly crosses my mind, she’s dead or they divorced and the kids stayed with their dad. 

I look down at my hands. Even though they were in my pockets they are still incredibly red and dry from the cold. The snow is starting to cover the ground, but I know it will be gone in the morning if not before. Snow doesn’t really stick in London, which is just as sad as stars not being able to be seen from down here. Sometimes I feel prisoner of somewhere where people come because they want to feel free instead. Why do I feel like that? I feel like I lost the spark along the way and I am still trying to find it like a blind man who tries to see again. 

I look up again and I realise the two kids and the dad are actually looking at me now, maybe they noticed the lonely guy under their window randomly sitting in the snow. I wonder what they might think of me. I decide it’s time to get up and go for a walk. At least I can try and look a bit less like a freak. 

London late at night never feels like it’s late at night, because people are awake, doing things and going somewhere pretty much at any time. Not as much as in day time, but you almost never get time for yourself while walking around. 

I can’t seem to find a way to warm my hands up so I give up. The snow is still slowly twirling around me, falling from the sky like a weird slowed down white rain. It feels weird, it’s like time slowed down. Snow doesn’t fall in London, so it must just be rain playing at a slowed down speed. The internal part of my scarf is wet with condensation which is sticking to my stubble. I look around and I realise I am not too far off from the walk along the river. Nobody is around that particular part of the path, so I - not very athletically - climb the fences that prevents you to walk on the shore when it’s cold and wet. The stairs are slippery and feel frozen and dangerous. I am not wearing the best of shoes, but for someone who’s grown up in the countryside I should be able to climb down without injuring myself. Somehow, I think maybe I got comfortable with all this commodities, living this lifestyle that made me softer and less driven. Yes, maybe I can blame my environment for my own doubts and questions. I don’t know. I sit down at the bottom of the stairs and look at the water being barely shaken by the snowflakes falling. I don’t even care anymore if my bum gets wet. The creases in the water reflect the white and red lights from the tall buildings which are not even that close to the Thames. Everything looks so slow, then why do I feel so late to the rush?  Maybe my perception of time is off, or maybe I am just so scared that everything just feels hyper-speed. I look at my wrist almost expecting to see a watch there. 

What’s wrong with me? That I need to go out in the cold and freeze my face to death to get a clear picture of what’s happening. I take my phone out of the pocket and there is just a message from Mary. She wants to know if everything’s okay as I haven’t replied for the whole day and normally that means my head is too loud for me to do anything else. I should probably get back to her, I don’t know why I haven’t done it. I just want to be by myself with my head for a bit. I think back to those kids at the window and wonder what I dreamed of when I was that young. What did I want to do? Who did I want to be? What did I see my life being once I would be my age? I remember limitless dreams, not being a knight or an astronaut, but mainly reaching the stars and doing something that made me happy and feel like I was successful. I wanted to change people’s life somehow, but I got bored along the way. Or maybe the constant thought that maybe it wasn’t really possible to do that and that I wasn’t good enough by myself got repeated so many times inside my brain that I started really believing in it. It felt - and feels - so true sometimes that just the thought of trying becomes unbearable. I think I spent so much time thinking about who I wanted to be that I lost who I actually was. 

A siren goes out in the night and my heart skips a bit, I am so lost in my own thoughts I lost track of my surroundings. I have to say that the wet inside my scarf is really starting to itch. I poke my mouth out so that I can breathe out of it and a storm of snowflakes settles down on my damp skin while clouds surrounds my face. It all looks so peaceful when I don’t have to think about tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I will wake up and I will be one of those kids at the window. Maybe I’ll be ten or eight again and my dad will run after me in the kitchen, playfully pretending I’m too fast for him. Maybe I will scream and screech and fight against his strong arms and he will lift me off the ground. I’ll be in the air, relying only on his strength because I know he won’t let me fall. Maybe my brother will then complain because he’ll want to fly too. Flying has always fascinated me, how can you be in the middle of the empty air and not fall? The air must be really strong to be able to keep you suspended, I used to think as a kid. I remember I used to always choose flying when I had to pick a superpower. I always pictured myself as a bird, defeating gravity and making a fool of the law of physics. Well, not exactly, but that was definitely what I thought as a kid. 

I wish my brain had stayed the same. I feel like realising how pointless things are until you don’t give them a meaning yourself was a defeating discovery for me. I wish I could have stayed in that status of complete ignorance and simple bliss that made me think I could be anything I wanted. In my head I keep spinning in the arms of my dad and screaming in joy and excitement, light as a bird and free. I sink into that deep feeling and I try to rewind my mind back to then. Rewinding that happiness and absorbing the lost youth. For a split second I am not in London anymore and all I can smell is my dad’s cologne. I remember how big his arms felt and how I dreamt to be like him one day. I take a deep breath and soak my brain into that memory in a way I just made up, looking for that lost kid I might quite possibly never find. 

The snow is still falling. I could fall asleep there.