Bangkok is weird.

Maybe it’s because all of the signs are in in the totally non-Western alphabet and while strange, though that’s easy to write off (but come on, forty-four consonants? Ain’t nobody got time for that!). And the hyper-aggressive suit/food/sex salesmen that are everywhere are only an east-Asian flavor of the pushy salesmen you find in most cities. It’s not that there are squat toilets (Matt hasn’t seen any yet, though it’s supposedly a big thing in the far east). In fact, the most jarring aspect of all is how the cars drove on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. That is to say, the left side (British-style). That is, until you’re stuck behind a car for anything more than three seconds. Then a brief jaunt over the solid yellow line is clearly warranted and no matter what country you’re asking, the Thai drivers are actually driving on the wrong side of the road. Mario Kart: Bangkok.

Oh yea, and the stubborn denial of modern hygiene; restaurant servers, street vendors, and taxi cab drivers (everyone!) cough directly into their hands and the latter pick their noses with a ferocity and shamelessness that trump any kindergarten excavations.

But we’re just getting started.

He had the cab driver drop him at his hostel to leave his backpack until check-in and ambled down to check out the fabled Khao San Road. Khao San Road is widely known to be the backpacker neighborhood/mecca of Bangkok and possibly the world. ‘The gateway to the East’. It’s only 8:30am local time (though much, much later for the jetlagged New Yorker), and the quarter-mile long street is already crammed with stalls hawking knock-off wares, questionable massages, and a humidity that erases even the memory of the sensation of dryness.

Matt quickly ducks into a bar and, wandering into the back, a much-needed bathroom. Sans toilet paper, of course. Nobody stocks TP in this damn country!

“Hey,” Matt says to the Western-looking young man standing next to him at the bathroom’s door, who is similarly weighing the pros and cons of paperless-deposit at the lavatory bank, “you know where we can get some toilet paper?”

The tan young man wears both sunglasses and his considerable weight with equal ease. It is an ease that speaks of confidence and a recent and extensive acquaintance with alcohol.

“Yes!” The newfound companion snaps out of his contemplation with a smile. “Follow me, my friend! We go to 7-11!” He sets off, spryer than expected. “Pom rak Meuang Thai!”

Matt power walks to keep up.

“Is… it far?” Matt asks as they exit into the nearby alley.

“Is it far? It’s right across the street! There’s a 7/11 everywhere. I love this country! Pom rak Meuang Thai!”

He’s right and they’re there in less than a minute. The young man, who introduces himself as Gio, takes the loud backpacker stereotype seriously, shouting the same phrase as though suffering from Thai-rettes Syndrome. His affliction manifests as they search the 7/11, accost-shouting at every Thai person he encounters. It makes conversation between the two travelers difficult and disjointed, but it is Gio’s second-to-last day in Thailand before returning to Colombia and after a two-week jaunt around the country he’s embracing the flickering neon grunginess of the locale.

“What does that mean, that Thai you keep shouting?” Matt asks as they step into the street.

“Pom rak Meuang Thai? It means ‘I love Thailand’. Pom rak Meuang Thai!” Gio laughs and hands Matt a stick of gum.

Matt doesn’t usually chew gum, but he takes the offering anyway, caught up in Gio’s aura. He’s a whirlpool of enthusiasm, sucking in anyone that passes too close (regardless of what language they speak). He releases them only when he’s distracted by something new or remembers his mission for the bathroom.

It takes almost ten minutes just to cross the street the second time. Eventually they arrive and split the roll of glorious Western innovation.

Matt is just settling in when he hears something strange from the other side of the aluminum divide.

“Is that Nirvana? Are you playing Nirvana right now?”

“Yes, of course!” Gio’s voice cuts through the echo of the tinny music. “Heart Shaped Box! It is better than listening to each other’s farts! You want some other song?”

As though the oddity here is the choice of music.

“No, no it’s okay. Nirvana’s cool.”

Once back on the open bar patio, the pair rejoins Gio’s drinking buddies. They’re a mixed group of about a dozen Western young men and lady Thai hangers-on. Almost instantly Gio is off, released back into his natural habitat. He’s clapping people on the back and laughing with the group of tired revelers. Most of the group doesn’t seem to share his enthusiasm, and the few who do are far less coherent than he.

The less energetic ones are eyeing their beers with distrust and smoking in near-silence at the table. They’re kept company by the TVs showing American programming that ring the room and women with expressions of drowsy resolve to keep up with their newfound men.

Matt is in good company then, collapsing into an open chair. His limbs are stricken with the same gentle numbness he always gets when he’s been up too long. He watches the woman sitting across from him whom in turn stare into the space beyond the TVs. They’re showing an American boxing match, Mayweather vs. Maidana. Neither the woman nor Matt seem to care. Another other lady has her head down on the table among the variety of bottles, eyes closed. Unconsciously, Matt begins to do the same. One eye droops. His grip on consciousness slips in the smoke and damp and heat of the bar–

“Can you believe this guy?” the pale blonde man to his left says, snapping him awake with an elbow, pointing at Gio. “We are drinking from 11pm last night and he just goes-goes-goes!”

It’s true, the Colombian puts Matt in mind of his own friend Muffly, ten thousand-plus miles away. Somehow that kid could shove down exhaustion and keep going, being the life of the party, unaffected by the mounting hours away from his bed. Matt thinks of his friends and family back home. What would they think of this place? Is it what they had expected him to find? Is it… what was he…? What…? He slowly slumps to the tabletop.

“Hey!” Gio is back, “Drink this!”

A liter-sized bottle of beer is thrust into Matt’s hands. The cold condensation brings him around and the ensuing quick gulp clears some of the static from his head.

“Thanks,” he turns back and says.

But Gio has already bounded off to the other table again.

Matt faces the blonde. “Yea, that guy is… something else.” he tilts the bottle toward him. “My name is Matt.”

The blonde is finishing lighting a cigarette so he waves his hand in the universal sign of ‘just a second’. He takes a drag and exhales. “My name is Johan,” pronouncing it ‘Joe-han’ with a European accent. He has an affable nicotine smile that reveals the disturbingly deep extent of his habit. “How long you been in Bangkok?”

“Just about two hours, but I’m pretty exhausted from the trip, like twenty-eight hours of flying.”

“Shut up, you’re not drinking like us even!”

“True.” Matt raises his bottle again.

Johan matches him, and the two take a swig. This leads to another swig and soon they’ve finished their beers. And then another round of ‘over-priced’ $4 liter bottles of Chang beer and another.

As they drink, Johan explains that he’s from Sweden, lives in Norway, and manages the distribution of wine and liquor back home. He travels to Thailand for a month at a time every year or so (and has been for almost a decade), with this most recent trip being a celebration of the way-of-life-restoring miscarriage of a one night stand from a few months back.

Now meet Tom, the ninteen year-old Dutch exchange student to their right. He has a Thai woman almost twice his age sitting on his lap. A completely different person from Johan or Gio, but the same easy smile. He’s been in Bangkok for a month and is already dreading having to leave. He explains all of this between earnest pulls on his beer, then returns to making out with his companion.

There’s Chris, the impossibly drunk British ex-pat Muay Thai fighter who can only seem to keep one eye open at a time. He’s seen navigating the bar, grabbing strangers’ beers, ripping a gulp from their bottles, and shoving the significantly emptier bottles back without a word. He’s been here for two years, he explains between his drink-rapes, and in that time perfected the baleful one-eyed glare he gives people as he drinks their beer. Matt had opened his mouth to protest the theft of his own alcohol, but had thought better of it. It’s a good glare.

Mike is Austrian, his strong handshake bespeaking a life of construction work. A mess of tattoos peek out of his tanktop and down his arms.

“Always be able to cover with a shirt!” he explains with a knowing wink. Sometimes you need to hide that second life.

This is also his first day in Thailand, arriving just an hour before the New Yorker, though Mike is quietly catching up to those who’d been out all night with a side flask of rum.

Matt tries engaging the local women, but they have no interest in any conversation that doesn’t entail giving them money or alcohol.

While finding his second wind meeting those around him, Matt flags down and orders some Pad Thai for lunch. He’d read that it was frowned upon to order it in Bangkok since it wasn’t real Thai food, but what culture was he trampling in this farang [Thai for ‘foreigner’] bar? Minutes later, the waitress brings out a steaming plate of the familiar dish of noodles, bean sprouts, probably-chicken, and peanuts. Matt’s sloshing stomach pines for solids and he fumbles chopsticks between his fingers.

No sooner is his head down, shoveling in the first bite, than the bar erupts in boos around him. Every Thai in the tables around him is shouting at him. Wait staff, patrons, bus boys, it doesn’t matter, they’re all in on it. Travelers from the tables around him turn to look for the source of the outburst of mock outrage.

“You can’t order Pad Thai, man!” Johan chastises with a smile and another elbow.

Tom laughs. “It’s not real Thai food!”

“They can go fuck themselves with ‘real Thai food’,” Matt curses between bites. “I’m starving and want my noodles.”

A blur of laughing and intense sunlight and it’s somehow 3pm. The gang is hammered and sitting at yet a third bar. Tom is gone, having left with his lady hours past, and Mike and Matt are smashed, having been going drink for drink for a while now.

Gio demands Matt find himself on Facebook in Gio’s phone because he desperately wants to stay in touch with his newfound brother. Matt and Gio have just shared their views on life, the latter confessing his filial love of the former while wrapping him in a bearhug that threatens to toothpaste-tube squeeze the similar-consistency’d beer and Pad Thai up and out onto the sticky bar top.

Johan has been and is still bluntly fending off the last remaining Thai woman’s demands for money for her time. “Fuck off! No one is making you stay!”

“Give me hundred baht!”

“Fuck no, go away.”

“Hundred baht!”

He blows smoke in her face and ignores her exaggerated coughing.

Baht is the currency of the country and at approximately 30 baht to a single US dollar (40 baht to a euro), many Thai are constantly trying to ask/not provide change for seemingly ‘insignificant’ amounts.

She finally realizes that Johan isn’t going to budge and pouts a moment, then comes to sit near the others. She sidles up to Matt, rubbing his arm and giving him an eyelash-batting smile. He’s past tired now, insofar as his body could keep going, but would certainly collapse as soon as it was allowed.

He guffaws at the woman and gets up. “Hey guys, I gotta get back to my hotel and pass the fuck out,” Matt tells the sweat- and beer-soaked group.

The news of his departure is received with jeers to stay and then heartfelt goodbyes.

“See you tonight, yes? Eleven?” Johan asks.

“Ummmm.” Matt had planned to take his first night easy and reset his sleep schedule.

“Shut up! No ummmms! You are coming!”

Fuck sleep schedules.

“Sure. Back where I met you?”

“Yes! See you there, Captain America!” Johan calls out as Matt walks away, up Khao San Road.

“Captain America!” Mike and Gio call out, raising their glasses and laughing.

Matt smiles. If this is his first day in Bangkok, what would his first night bring?

Khao San Road during the day, a mass of stalls and “civilization”