Even though it feels like Bangkok was months ago, I guess it was just a little over a week. Here’s what happened when we got there…

So we arrived in Bangkok by plane on the second-to-last night of the water festival celebrating Songkran (the Thai new year) where people dump, spray, and shoot water at you at all hours of the day. Though the festival is only celebrated for a few days in some places, Bangkok celebrates for SEVEN days and SEVEN nights. We got a taxi from the airport and told the driver the name of our hotel and that it’s not too far from Khao San Road, which is the main touristy crazy area. As we neared our hotel, things got progressively crazier and crazier, until we were being tossed out on the sidewalk, bags and all. The taxi driver said something about being unable to drop us too close to the hotel because of the festival, and we could see that roads were blocked so we took his word for it. When he stopped, he just started unloading our bags onto the sidewalk, which was wet and covered in baby powder. I ran out to grab the plastic garbage bag I had brought with me to start putting it over the top of my bag, while Dylan did the same inside the cab, trying to waterproof his bag. He paid the driver, and in the flurry of everything, we didn’t ask the driver which way it was to the hotel. [Note to anyone going to Bangkok: Lamphu Tree House Hotel is a great hotel, but beware of staying there because no cab driver in the city knows where it is, and they will constantly confuse it for Lamphu House, located on Khao San Road, which is what happened in this case.]

We were on the street, right in the thick of the water festival, when we realized we had no idea which way to go. We had the hotel map in hand and stopped a few times for directions. Each time we got slightly different directions and had to ask again, and our map was also getting progressively wetter and wetter. Finally, someone in a shop told Dylan that we should take a tuk-tuk to the hotel because we were “really far.” We hailed a tuk-tuk and off we went. Dylan tried to negotiate a lower price than the driver wanted, but I was like, “Just pay whatever he wants! I don’t care!” I think when Dylan tried to lower the price, the driver actually said something like, “What?! You need me!” So the driver took us right to our hotel and finally we were out of the madness. The whole time we were walking around aimlessly, we were getting increasingly damp. I was excited to get to the hotel.

We set out on foot to hopefully get some food, leaving basically everything we would normally take in the hotel because we knew we’d get drenched anywhere we went (for this reason I have like zero photos from Bangkok).

We walked into the thick of things, staying pretty dry for the most part, miraculously. We walked past the night market, but it was closing down for the night. We found a little hole in the wall for dinner (I think it was maybe called “Beach Bar”?) where groups of young Thai kids sat around tables filled with booze and delicious-looking fried food. We asked what they had ordered because it looked good, and we found out the answer was “fried chicken knuckle.” So naturally we had to order that, and it actually turned out to be delicious! We also ordered a mixed meat spicy soup, which luckily for me was filled mostly with different types of seafood and squid, which I’d probably prefer to other weird meat options. It was also really yummy.

Walking back to our hotel, we decided to cruise though the streets a bit and before long it was very clear that we’d not be going home dry. We walked down a road near Khao San that was pretty touristy. We continued to get drenched, drank a bit from a random Thai dude’s bucket (a mix of whiskey, coke, red bull, and ice in a bucket with straws—basically Thai FourLoko), had an impromptu dance party in the street with Thai locals and foreigners, and finally took a break from the madness to smoke hookah. All in all, a great first night!!