We’re All Looking For The Same Thing (Bangkok travel story)

Bangkok Travel Story

There was a tiny little bar that sat on a sidewalk next to a 7-11 on the streets of Bangkok. It was just big enough to sit two bar stools in front of it and it was made of scrap pieces of wood with a cardboard sign that read

Cheap Whisky here

The little wooden structure looked as if it was ready to crumble under the weight of the liquor bottles that lined the top frame of it. I sat down on one stool and got myself a double shot to start off.

Crows of wild people passed continually in every direction. Most were drinking and if they weren’t drinking yet they would soon be after a quick trip to the 7-11 to stock up. The smell of the gutters permeated the air around the ramshackle bar and poured ubiquitously around me. The smell was reminiscent of old polluted pond water. You could almost taste the bitterness with a deep breath even over the steep stench of the cheap whiskey.

The lady behind the makeshift bar was an old busty Thai woman somewhere in her late fifties. She had a voice like she had chain-smoked since puberty and would hack up great balls of mucus every few minutes and spit them out onto the sidewalk next to her incense offering by a little buddha statue.

A young girl came and sat on the stool next to me and we talked for some time. The conversations flowed naturally with her and she drank whiskey by the cup. We hit it off pretty well and I caught a little wind of the drunk love.

“You want her?”

Asked the old woman behind the bar.

“Huh?”

It took me a minute before the realization hit me.

“God damnit,”

I said. “I forgot I was in the city of cheap swindlers.”

The girl looked down with a motionless expression. I felt like I inadvertently hit her in the feels.

I smashed one more whiskey before saying sorry to the girl once more then went on my way with a drunken stumble in my step.

The next afternoon I went to see the Erawan Shrine. It was a beautiful gold statue of Brahma with four faces that looked out in each cardinal direction. People traveled from all over the world to give offerings to this shiny little bastard in hopes for better karma, or blessings in their lives, or maybe just better luck with tomorrow.

The whole area was shrouded in bunches of magnificent yellow flowers. It seemed more like the burial of a king rather than some constructed statue for tourists. The smell of incense burned my nostrils the closer I got but it didn’t seem to bother me that much. In its own way, it was kind of satisfying.

I watched the people move in and out as they dropped their offering and knelled in prayer below the golden god. Then I saw her. The hooker from the night before. She was still wearing the same sundress and was on her knees below the one smiling face. She dropped a bed of flowers and blew a kiss up to him before disappearing back into the crowd.

“We are all looking for the same thing,” I said to myself.

If you want to travel Bangkok, and dive into your own adventure, you can check out this page. It shows you all the cool things you can do if you want to plan ahead or simply daydream about it.

If you want to read about my first ten minutes in Bangkok, which were f****ing nuts, read it here.

Thanks for reading the Bangkok travel story.