Sun 10th Dec – Chiang Mai -> Bangkok

A domestic flight on a Thai airway I’ve never heard of before (Nok Air) is the key event of the day, departing Chiang Mai and arriving back into Bangkok. This marks the end of the journey north, and commences the beginning of the trek south. The flight is an hour of the usual heart wrenching anxiety, exacerbated by the fact that my plane has a cartoon birds beak on its front.

Touching down in Bangkok gives no sense of the satisfaction that the long train trips and bus rides did going north. There is no sense of the people and paddocks that stretch the long distance between the two locations. It also represents a transition in my tour, where I leave the first group and join a second, the latter of which will be with me for two weeks into Malaysia and then Singapore.

Having seen none of Bangkok when I landed a week ago, I now have a bit over a day here. At first I presumed the hotel was poorly located, given the onslaught of cannibas shops and hawkers aggressively promoting dirt cheap rubbish. There is a general disgust for tourists from the vendors, each one more insistent then the next that they will extract some form of money for some form of material. I quickly grow tired of being accousted for a taxi ride, Thai massage or weed. Or all three at once. The street food also doesn’t have the variety I experienced further north. Noodle soup with pork balls is popular. Mango sticky rice. Beer. Weed. I am tired.

Three people from the first tour group are doing a second trip that leaves from the same hotel, so we are half together again for a night. I have plans to go to a sky bar called Red Sky (courtesy of Sarah G.), which is about 20minutes away from the hotel. As happens in group scenarios, there is a hesitant and confusing period where I sort of offer for them to join, they sort of agree. When we arrive, there is reluctance from the other three about the fact this is an upmarket hotel and the vibe/expense this necessitates. I, thanks to Leo and Pauline and the Sydney interest rate derivatives broker scene, am well accustomed to this lavishness and am unfazed by the fact that we are dressed like the low budget tour group we are. I do feel uncomfortable that they are uncomfortable that each drink is ten times the price of everywhere else the group has been and shout our only round there. It’s the first time I think about work since I’ve arrived in Thailand.