This is the 17th Chapter of the Short Travel Stories shared to you, by us from Gone Atlas. These are real life stories we have either lived, or shared with us by friends.

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Chapter 17: Welcome To Thailand

I arrived in Bangkok on an evening flight and it wasn’t till after nine that I arrived at the hostel. Online it said that the reception was open 24 hours, however there was no-one there to open. I tried to call them for around ten minutes (thank God I bought a Sim at the airport), until they finally answered and said they’d be there in around half an hour.

I’d have to wait.

Fortunately, some people arrived like ten minutes later, all staying there already. They opened, I dropped my bag packs, and they asked me to come for dinner with them.

One of the things I’ve learned traveling, and I hope this works as advice (no matter how obvious it is), is that no matter how tired, or timid you are, you have to try to socialize and say yes to new experiences. Isn’t that one of the main reasons you travel for?

I was really tired but I went with them, and I was sociable and friendly and asked them the classic questions: where are you from? How long have you been in Thailand and traveling in general? Etc.

It just comes out automatically now, to be sociable, and I actually like it, I became good at genuinely listening to people’s stories. I like when they pay attention to mine and remember my name, so I put some effort into that, plus I also learnt that out of nowhere you can meet a traveler with a mind blowing story.

Anyways, we started walking through the neighborhood; we were close to Silom Road, a very international and “Thai high class” area. Still, the sidewalks were cramped with people selling from clothing, to pot bongs, sex toys and of course: taser guns.

After the introductory walk we walked into a local food restaurant where I had a chance to meet everyone. That night I clicked with two Welsh brothers, one of them as big as a fridge. The other one was around my size and weight. Big contrasts between the two, but both of them were great.

With them there was this short, tanned and curly black hair Dutch guy. Classic Dutch, huh? Seemed more like another Costa Rican.

However, what caught my eye from him wasn’t really his Latino look, but the fact that he had literally a necklace of what seemed like hickies. I didn’t know if he had some sort of accident or if he had actually hooked up with a vampire. As I had just met him, and nobody ahs said anything about it, I didn’t ask.

We finished our meal, went back to the hostel with some beers, I checked-in and a group of like twelve of us started playing drinking games in the common area. While we played there was this really obnoxious guy playing loudly his guitar and singing really badly, and constantly bragging about the fact that he learnt to play just six weeks before.

No shit!

The night ended up being a total madness. We started off at a strip-club, don’t get me wrong, we didn’t really go there for the ladies (although in Thailand it wouldn’t be a shock), but to see a Muay-Thai fight. They tend to use these clubs in Thailand to do that. When you walk in you still see all these old degenerate men sitting around round tables with barely eighteen year old Thai girls, that’s if they really are eighteen.

We saw two fights, both spectacular.

We left even more drunk and headed off to Khao San Road.

The street of delirium, exaggeration and the absurd. We ate fried scorpions, drank buckets of vodka and Sprite, ate the famous “toasties” at a 7eleven and ended up clubbing at this bizarre bar with loud music and bald guys snorting coke in the restroom.

After a couple of hours the police shut down all the venues in the area and we had to leave. We got different cabs and me, the Welsh and the Dutch jumped into one. We negotiated previously and headed back to the hostel. On our way there, surprise, the driver pulls over. No harm though, he just picked up a random Thai girl, and asked to the human Welsh fridge to move to the back and let the lady sit in the front. What a gentleman.

We tried to talk to her but no luck, she didn’t speak any English.

He left us at the hostel where we emt with the rest of the group. Some of us were still drunk and full of energy so we went looking for something else. On the main road this old, like sixty-year-old, came up and offered to take us to another club. We went with him but the club ended up being another strip club. Inside more bald men doing coke and more old degenerate old men with Thai girls playing legal.

I left with the Welsh and the Dutch, others stayed.

On the way back, more drunk and loose, I asked the Dutch about his neck.

“Oh man! So basically last night I had nothing to do so I went to a small bar for a beer. I met these guys and went with them to Khao San Road, where I met a Chinese girl and this happened!” he said.

We all burst into laughter. The Welsh apparently were also curious, but hadn’t asked because they had just met him that morning.

And that was the end of the night.

Welcome to Thailand.