Bewildered in Bangkok

Posted by Lauren Dold on 18 April 2023

I landed in Bangkok just before midnight on a muggy night in April. More specifically, 14 April, right in the middle of Songkran.

‘You go, you go!’ my driver barked at me as I stared wide-eyed at him from the back seat of his taxi. Water splashed against the windows. I could see no sign of the Green House Hostel. ‘You go!’ he shouted one more time, as I climbed out of the car and retrieved my luggage from the boot. I was there to teach English for the year and had overpacked so desperately that I strained under the weight of my suitcase. It was too hard and too heavy to carry so I dragged it, wheels spinning in the wet streets.

As soon as I closed the car door, the taxi driver crept back into the slow traffic. As I turned around a jet of water hit me in the face. I found myself staring down the barrel of a water gun, attached to the arm of a Thai teenager who sprayed me again, then focused his attention on some girls to my right.

I had known I would be arriving during Songkran, the Thai celebration of the new year, but I was not expecting shenanigans of this scale. Everywhere were people armed with water guns, water balloons, buckets of water and bowls of talcum powder. Everyone, unlike me, was wearing goggles. They aimed randomly, targeting anything that moved and especially things that did not move, like me.

I looked around, desperate to get my bearings. My phone would not work as I hadn’t bought a sim card yet, and anyway, who would I call? I put my hand in my pocket, feeling around for the address of the hostel that I’d had translated into Thai, and pulled out bits of soggy, disintegrated paper.

I stumbled forward, laden with luggage and no clue where to go. I went to stand under a bright yellow sign and tried to figure out my next move. This was not how I was used to arriving in foreign countries. I was an airline brat, and from the age of four until this moment, I had travelled in style, flying business class, being put up in smart accommodation and fetched from the airport in a lovely coach to be deposited safely at the door of a hotel.

Illustration by Jess Nicholson

‘Do you need help?’ English! But with a French accent. A shirtless boy with wet, shoulder-length hair approached me, and I told him where I needed to go. He didn’t know the place but he said he’d help me find a taxi. He turned and walked towards a dark side street. I tightened my grip on my luggage but didn’t follow. He returned a few moments later with two men in helmets who asked: ‘Where you go?’

It didn’t matter how many times I said ‘Green House Hostel’, they didn’t seem to understand. They said a few words to one another in Thai, then suddenly said ‘We know!’ They were motorbike taxi drivers, the easiest way to get around any city in Thailand, but I didn’t know that yet.

The French boy helped me with my bags, loading my luggage onto one bike and piling me onto the other. He waved and we were off, getting sprayed by passersby as we manoeuvred to get out of the crowds. Suddenly, the bike with my luggage went left at a fork and my driver and I went right. I shouted, but he ignored me. There was nothing I could do but cling to this stranger and hope I ended up at my hostel.

We drove for about 10 minutes, then mercifully the neon green lights of the Green House appeared. I hopped off the bike, rather ungracefully and was about to begin yelling about my luggage when the bike with the bags pulled up. I grabbed them, fished out my wallet and asked the drivers what I owed them. ‘2 500 baht’. I had ฿3 000 (R1 000) which was supposed to last me much longer than my first two hours in Bangkok. Having not yet developed any Thai haggling skills, I had no choice but to give it to them. 

Wet and tired, I dragged my bags into the hostel and didn’t even mind that my room had no windows or that it was painted lime green. I grabbed a Wi-Fi code and went to unpack my iPad, which I’d just been given for my 18th birthday, to let my family know I’d arrived. It was nowhere to be found. That explained the detour. 

I woke up the next day at almost noon, with no iPad and a skraal wallet, put on my most waterproof clothes and headed outside to get familiar with my surroundings and to get myself a water pistol. I turned right out of my hostel, was immediately drenched by Songkran revellers and then took the first left to look for a gun and nearly walked straight into the bright yellow sign I’d stood under the night before. Three hundred metres from my hostel.

This article originally appeared in the February 2022 print issue of Getaway.

Originally written by Lauren Dold; Illustration by Jess Nicholson 

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