THREE DAYS IN BANGKOK: DRINKING IN SILOM
May 15th 2011 05:21
When we stepped out of the plane and into Suvarnabhumi airport I thought: this is big. It was the biggest airport I’d seen in my life. You needed to ride an elephant on top of an elephant on top of three more elephants to touch the ceiling.
The walkway from our gate to the baggage claim was a long and large one. Once in a while there’d be some sort of painting or sculpture to our left, and every time we’d pass one the receptionist would go, “That’s nice, that’s nice,” and I’d sort of agree with her. I was hung over.
The receptionist organised a driver to drive us to our hotel. He smiled a lot and only nodded when we asked him things. I had no idea what the hell sort of tip I was supposed to give him.
The receptionist put her hand on mine. “I’m taking you to see a tiger show.”
“What, like in the zoo?”
She grinned. “Nothing like the zoo. You’ll see.”
The trip to our hotel was a lot of peering out of the window and falling asleep and waking up again and peering out of the window. It was sunny and the roads were giant tongues of… roads.
A lot of my mates love going to Asia to stay in hostels and huts and other “rough” environments, but the receptionist and I decided to enjoy our stay as generically as possible: we booked a room in a Holiday Inn.
After checking into our room and after some tired fooling around we walked out and walked past stores and restaurants and massage parlours and jewellery shops and staring people and a McDonald’s and a lot of grey. It was sunny and the traffic was thick; when I’d inhale I’d cough a little bit. We walked into a bar and drank beautifully cheap whisky and beer and whisky. I was halfway through telling the receptionist about something when she grabbed my arm and pointed at something.
“That guy just stole the other guy’s phone!”
Before I could say anything she pulled me and we chased him – well, she did. I didn’t know what was going on so I just ran. I ran and ran and ran. I screamed and ran. After I ran out of breath I realised the receptionist was no longer next to me and I had no idea where I was.
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