Bangkok

It is still strange to me, to wake up in Maryland, and go to bed in Thailand (albeit, two days later). The trip went very smoothly. Almost too smoothly; part of me feels that a life shift of this magnitude should require some rite of passage, which this journey did not feel like, though, I am sure there are difficulties enough to come. I am also still having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I'm here for the long run, and its not a brief trip.

Arriving in Bangkok I had a strange sense of familiarity, for a place that I have never been to before. This sameness, in landing in another new place, the clear identification as an outsider, the isolation, the relief only slightly tinged with disappointment that English is taking over the world. The same taxi, the same driver, the same guesthouse. There are more places that are the same that are unlike America than there are those that are like it. I feel as though I already have some understanding of this place, though I have hardly begun to learn it.



View from my balcony at Asha Guesthouse in Bangkok. (The website portrays it as much fancier than it is)






Ibid.






My room at Asha Guesthouse in Bangkok. I arrived at midnight, and left at 8 am, but enjoyed those 8 hours. There is a little bar where I took a beer and enjoyed free wifi after arriving, and breakfasted by the pool in the morning. Around 4 am I was awoken by shouts because a crowd was watching the Euro cup soccer game in the courtyard below my window (soccer is very big here).