The phone is squawking its alarm and an arm reaches over and clicks it off.

A backpacker rolls over in the white sheets, groaning awake in the darkness of his hotel room. For a second he forgets who and where he is, only knowing the yanked-sideways feeling of being awoken mid-sleep cycle. Then he remembers: he’s Matt, he’s in Bangkok, and he needs to get up and get down to Khao San Road to meet up with the Europeans. Matt’s still drunk as he clicks his belt on and though his watch reads 10:30pm, he knows that it’s really Show Time.

“Captain America!” Johan cheers when he sees the American walk up to the same table where they met that morning.

Matt claps Johan and Mike on the back and orders a liter of Chang from the bar before heading back to the evening crowd. Gone are Gio and Tom, replaced by a host of fresh, new faces. Most of them are more European guys, but one is a lady. And she’s pretty. Out of habit Matt slips into the empty chair next to her and begins to flirt.

Her name is Rachel and she’s been in Thailand for two weeks already. It’s her group’s last night in the city, so they figured they’d get sloshed and end the night with their 5am flight the following morning. Rachel’s a Southeast Asia travelling pro, having been to Indonesia and Malaysia before, and is bringing her buddy Emmet out for his first jaunt into this gem of the East.

Emmet’s frizzy, chest-length beard frames a grinning face that would be more at home in Middle Earth than Thailand. Matt, who’s growing out his own facial hair, looks over the beard longingly, wondering how many more months it’ll take for his short beard to get that long. Emmet’s more preoccupied with beer than beards, and toasts Mike, who’s sitting next to him. The pair take a swig of the ubiquitous Chang, and Emmet meets Matt’s high five. Nice beard, bro.

“So that’s it, you’re just here with Emmet?”

“Oh no,” Rachel says, her native-level comfort with the English language already as pleasant to Matt’s ears as her Irish accent, “I’m also with my boyfriend, Casper.”

At her gesture, Matt turns around and comes face-to-belly with said boyfriend. Craning his neck up like he’s in a cartoon, he discovers first a burly chest then bleary eyes bearing down at him. The pair stare up and down each other’s noses for a second or two before Matt finds the wherewithal to stand up and meet this unfriendly ghost more evenly.

“You must be Casper. Pleasure to meet you!”

Casper says nothing.

“Do… you want your seat back…?” Matt offers.

Casper’s face remains unchanged for several long moments. Without any real transition in between he begins dancing, actually dancing, away and back to the bar.

“Um?” Matt asks Rachel, sitting back down.

“Oh, he’s pissed right now. Really, really pissed.”

Matt tenses briefly before he remembers that in the UK, pissed means drunk rather than angry. He decides to smooth over the entire exchange and pulls out a dollar bill from his pocket and begins to fold. He continues to chat with Rachel some more as he does so. She tells him of how they met (“Just a pub, really”) and how both work as managers at two different box stores back home.

“Given our jobs, right, we’re both pretty assertive personalities. So when we travel we usually like to let each other do their own thing.”

Rachel can’t care less about a more traditional life back home and would prefer to scuba dive every day if her life allowed for it. She’s sort of fell into everything that she’s been doing thus far though, and it’s all worked out.

While Rachel explains all of this, Matt finishes folding and lightly places the Scottish terrier on the table, waiting until she notices.

And she does, cutting herself off in the middle of her sentence. “You just made that without even looking! Is that a Scottie?”

“Yes. Well, I have to look at the first step, to fold it in half,” Matt admits. “But yea, Scottish terrier.”

The table is ooh’ing and ahh’ing and Johan picks up the dog and shows it off to his friend.

Johan’s friend is Andy, his colleague and friend back in Oslo. Both are originally from Sweden and so while the conversation flows mostly in English, it eddies from time to time into Scandinavian when one or the other is at a loss for vocabulary. Andy’s thin and scruffy face provides a foil to Johan’s rounder and almost-sunburned mug.

He’s smiling less than his blonde counterpart when he points at Matt’s bracelet. “What is that on your arm?”

Matt thrusts out his wrist to the pair. He shows off the lime-green bracelet given to him for volunteering a month prior at the Shambhala Music Festival. The cloth wristband labels hima crew member and has been covered in hearts to broadcast the Canadian event’s focus on universal love, acceptance, and understanding of others. Very hippie, very fun.

Matt explains all of this to the Swedes in as simple English as he could.

“That’s pretty gay, man,” Andy concludes and leans back into his chair.

“Whatever you say. But the dozens of topless women walking around didn’t feel that gay to me.”

Johan snorts and waves Andy to back off, changing the subject to the rest of their night, giving the terrier back to Rachel, who goes to show it off to Casper. Mike breaks off from chatting with Emmet and listens to the Swede.

“We should go to see lady dancers– Nothing sleazy, nothing sleazy!” Johan adds when he notices Matt’s raised eyebrows.

The gang downs a few rum-and-cokes (Sang Som rum being all the rage out here) and another round or two of beers while recounting minor adventures and excitements from the past few weeks of travel. Eventually the Swedes pay their tabs and accompany Matt and Mike in saying goodbye to the other backpackers and then out into the street.

Once outside, they’re hit full-force with the sheer volume of Khao San Road. Not only are there crowds and crowds of people, both locals and tourists, but there’s music blasting from each restaurant/bar along the strip. Matt hasn’t heard music this loud since his foray into British Columbia the month prior and even then it wasn’t as schizophrenic as this. Every bar has a different song going, all as loud as possible, all funneled through the bar and into the street. Walking down the road the music not only changes every ten seconds or so, but each ear is trying to focus on the tune coming from the bars on their respective sides.

“The music wars begin!” Johan proclaims and raises his arms in grandeur. He stops and gestures at a smaller man trying to get their attention by waving colorful balloons in their faces. “You want gas?” He has to shout to be heard over the cacophony.

“Gas?” Matt’s confused.

“Yes, gas. Laughing gas! We will all do gas!”

“Oh, whippets.” Matt understands. “I’m all right, thanks.”

“The other day I had some gas,” Andy begins in his personal brand of lilting Swedish accent, “and I accidentally breathe in the entire balloon. All at once! I fell to the ground and was so gone for a minute! Bye-bye!”

“That’s crazy!”

Mike isn’t saying anything but grinning and nodding in agreement. He’s just along for the ride.

“Crazy?” Johan gets excited and is still shouting to be heard. “We meet a German last week, he is running around with a camera, filming the girls at the pool! And then they get angry and kick him out. Then he is telling us about how he is going to blow up this and that building! That guy, he is crazy!” He pulls another cigarette from his pack. “Show him your tattoo, Andy!”

Andy grins and grabs his lower lip, flipping it down towards his chin. There’s a few characters written on the fleshy pink inside, about an inch-and-a-half wide in total.

“What’s it say?”

“RockCock.de!” Johan squeals. “It’s that German guy’s website he was filming all the girls for! Some new porno website!”

Andy is grinning like the madman he is.

“Why…?” Matt trails off for a second as they reach the end of the street where the music isn’t as overwhelming, “Now that’s gay.”

Mike claps Matt on the back and the two chuckle at Team Swede. Andy rolls his eyes and Johan flashes a grin before running over to organize a tuktuk ride for the lot of them. Tuktuks are effectively motorized rickshaws, covered go-karts really, that prey mainly on tourists to get them around Bangkok. Their drivers are notoriously dodgy, frequently taking their passengers to unwanted destinations, places where the driver can collect free gas coupons for bringing customers to the local businesses.

“Get in,” Johan explains. “We are going to Nana Plaza.”

The relative emptiness on the dark roads allows the puttering tuktuk to hit its max speed of about 30 mph pretty quickly. The cool breeze is a welcome sensation to the group packed together in the passenger area that was not meant for four grown men.

Johan asks how old Matt is and is shocked to realize he’s only 27, the youngest of them all by at least half a decade. In turn, Matt asks what they’re looking to do in their 30’s, like get married or something. Mike says he already is, though his hands are pointedly ringless. Johan and Andy have no desire to have kids or start a family, with Andy’s girlfriend of five years having recently broken up with him for this exact reason. They ask Matt about his own status and he tells them about his girlfriend back in the States. He shows them pictures on his phone and mentions that she’ll be visiting in ten weeks or so. Far too long.

Fifteen minutes later and they’re pulling up to a happening street crowded with Thai party-goers. The stream of people pass the Western newcomers in droves though it’s only a Sunday night.

Nana Plaza turns out to be a three-story outdoor mall plaza, comprised of literally nothing besides go-go bars, surrounded by restaurants, bars, and everything else that comes with every seedy tourist trap.

Johan points out Spanky’s on the second floor, his favorite establishment, and a small Thai woman ushers the group past the heavily curtained entrance a moment later. The bar is dark, dimly lit with scarlet and purple LEDs, and empty save for a few sullen, middle-aged Westerners on the right and the five topless Thai girls two-stepping around the stripper poles on a raised central platform. The girls giggle with each other and shake various parts of themselves at the new patrons. Johan’s group takes a seat on the left and he orders them all a round of Chang. The guys continues to chat, treating the women as background noise more than anything else.

White lights flash on to the left, only a foot away from the left and a plexiglass shower stall is illuminated, revealing a young woman sudsing up inside. She starts gesturing and writing numbers with soap on the pane between them, presumably amounts of money to be paid to her. Andy and Matt, the two sitting literally right next to the tank, laugh and she washes the divide clean and begins to draw penis after penis in front of her. The pair keep gesturing her to draw them bigger and bigger as she complies and simpers for money again (or perhaps for someone to take her out of that shower-prison).

On the right, Mike and Johan are arguing which girl they find the prettiest.

“Captain!” Johan says as he knocks Matt in the chest with his empty hand, the other trailing smoke. “She is wearing a American flag! She is the best!”

It’s true, one of the dancers does have an American flag bikini bottom on, but Matt only raises an eyebrow at the proclamation and Mike resumes their argument.

Nothing sleazy, huh? The whole affair seems oddly sterile, despite the sticky floors and strewn-about cigarette butts. The strange air of unmet expectations from everyone inside pervades the experience. With the first round of beers finished, Johan suggests they all move to another bar, perhaps one with a few more people, something livelier.

They’re back out in the open plaza and humid night air. Neon signs and promoters compete for their attention from all directions. Mike chooses a bar a few curtains down, but before he could do more than peek inside, Johan cautions that they have only ladyboys in there. The Austrian recoils in horror and Johan doubles over laughing. Flustered, Mike about-faces and leaps into a bar that they’d just passed.

Sexy Nights, Matt reads as he follows the group and steps through the veil.

This bar is even emptier and tamer than the first. The girls stand on fashion-like runways amid completely empty stools. One man in the far back corner is preoccupied with one of the dancers, but otherwise, the disco ball-lit room is all theirs.

Mike sits on the end and flags down a waitress while the rest survey the scene. The girls are wearing nothing on their breasts and only bored expressions on their faces. They chat nonchalantly and occasionally deign to look down at the newcomers. A beer is put in front of each of them and Matt turns to Mike in cheers, but finds him already engaged in conversation with his server. The other three toast and sip their drinks, settling into the stools.

Not seeing much else to do, Matt pulls out another dollar bill. He waves it at one on of the girls on the bar and she rushes over, hand outstretched. He shakes his head, holding his empty palm up indicating ‘stop’, and the girl pouts. He’s folding another origami terrier while Johan asks him about it.

“You do the whole thing without looking?”

Matt winks.

“Amazing! Captain America, you are a superhero!”

Johan leaves the grinning Matt to his folding and drinking and talks with Andy in Swedish, and it’s not long before the terrier is finished. Matt proffers up the dog and the dancer from before wanders back. Her mouth going from flat line to agape as she takes the dollar and examines it. She clicks over in her platform heels to her friend to show off the gift in a barrage of Thai explanation. She gestures to the resident folder and the other girl strikes a pose.

“Make one for me!”

“Give me a dollar! Or some other bill first!” He shouts back and rubs the fingers of one hand together.

Johan is watching the dancer as she reaches into her bottoms and pulls out a wad of Thai baht. She picks out a green 20 note and walks it over to Matt, who straightens it out and once again begins to fold.

Johan laughs uproariously while smacking the table. “This is the first time I have ever seen a Thai girl give a white boy money!” He playfully shoves the American sitting next to him. “Superhero!”

Matt is pleased at first, but he’s soon encountering difficulties with the differently shaped baht note. He can’t get the legs to fold right and his fingers aren’t moving as deftly as they had several drinks ago. Still struggling, another waitress sidles up, demanding a terrier of her own.

“Come on, I’m still in the middle of this one!”

The waitress frowns and whines at him as he ignores both her and the unsettling dampness of the bill and continues wrestling with the shorter paper. Maybe… if he tapers the whole body down? A minute or two later and it’s working. He’s salvaged the hind legs, sighing with the completed effort and handing up the finished piece.

More simpering and more girls have come from the back room to wave a rainbow of currency at him to fold. Even the doors to the kitchen (apparently there is a kitchen back there) opens, spilling harsh white light onto the whole affair. Apron-ed chefs are peaking out to see what the commotion is all about.

Matt declines the challenge of forcing another drunken origami struggle and gulps down the rest of his beer. Johan and Andy are chattering in Swedish, laughing all the while.

“You! You come work here!” one woman from the kitchen shouts.

This elicits a bark of a laugh from Captain America. As if he couldn’t find anything better to do with his craft than entertain at Nana Plaza. He checks his watch: 3am. “Come on, let’s get out of here, I’m too tired for more of this.”

The women are all crowding around them, leaning in, smiling, fawning over the Westerners.

“Leave? Now? All the girls want you!” Johan protests. “Captain! Captain!”

Matt turns around to seek support from Mike, but finds him intimately involved with the waitress from earlier. He meets Johan’s eyes again and the man relents.

With a bit of difficulty and cajoling, they pry the Austrian from his new friend. Seconds later as they’re about to head down the stairs of the plaza, Mike’s girl bursts out into the night, sprints over, and jumps on him, begging to be taken home. He grins and placates her, but eventually declines her offer and the group heads home once more.

As before, the petrol-smelling breeze in the tuktuk is a soothing interlude in the night out in the jungle city and Matt sticks his head out of the side to really lean into it. The humidity of the evening returns only once they arrive back at Khao San, the music from the bars more subdued now that it’s so late.

Mike heads home, leaving the others to order another round at the Khao San Center Bar, their de facto hub. Rachel, Casper, Emmet, and the other familiar faces are long gone, though a tall, dark-haired man walks up and sits down at a table nearby, all alone.

“It your first day?” Matt asks.

It is, the Belgian man named David tells them. He’s here in Thailand for a month, excited to explore the deep jungle to the north in a few days. He moves to their table and they share some drinks and their stories from the night. Matt prompts Andy to show off his inner lip tattoo.

“No! This is not a real tattoo! No!” David sputters.

Everyone cracks up again.

David winces when the group remarks about Mike’s infidelity. “That is why I broke up with my girlfriend a few years ago. I was stupid,” he relates with a Flemish accent, “and I was not thinking correct at that time. She was wonderful, perfect, and I could not look at her the same anymore and I broke up. I never tell her why, but I had to do it. The biggest regret of my life.” He takes a long pull of his beer.

They drink in silence for a minute, then quiz Matt on his other hobbies, his past job, the sorts of things he likes to do. He tells them, excitedly showing them pictures on his phone of origami, costuming, cross-stitching, and the selfie-a-day time lapse he’s been working on.

“You are smart. You have computer-brain.” Johan concludes sagely.

“Ah, you guys,” Matt smiles and looks at his feet, “you’re kind of fuck-ups, but you’ve got good hearts. Even Andy.”

They laugh and raise their bottles. As one, they finish their beers and the Europeans want to order another round, but Captain America needs to get home if he’s to have any semblance of a sleep schedule out here in Thailand. They agree to meet at the bar again tomorrow (technically today) at 5pm.

Matt walks up the tile-paved marketplace between Khao San and his hotel. Along the way he fulfills an earlier promise to himself and buys a kabob stick of roasted chicken hearts and a small grilled whitefish for 20 baht ($0.62). The chicken is lean and spicy. The fish is boring and boney. Neither fills him up so he orders a bowl of soup from one of the myriad of carts further down the street for another 25 baht.

He sits down at the public tables across from an old man having the same midnight chicken noodle soup with bean sprouts.

“Sah-was-dee-khrap [Hello],” Matt says in Thai, putting his hands together into the wai of local greeting.

“Sah-was-dee-khrap,” the man returns and slurps up some noodles in the Thai fashion. His left hand has a fork and his right holds the gravy boat-like soup spoon endemic to many Asian cultures. He uses the fork to construct a single bite of balanced flavors, the goal of all Thai cuisine (at least according to a set of quick Thai food documentaries Matt had watched on his flight out to Bangkok). “Where from?” he asks.

“New York. America.”

He nods. “Ah, American. My son in America.” he thinks a second. “San fran-cis-co.”

Matt nods encouragingly, devouring his meal. When had he last eaten? Lunchtime?

“Son wife American. She bossy. Very bossy.”

“Bossy good sometime,” Matt finds himself responding in equally broken English. Did that make it easier or harder for foreigners to understand him?

“Bahhhhh!” he groans. “Yes and no. No and yes. But son good, son happy. You son?”

“Do I have a son?” Matt asks of the nodding old man who is so hunched over that his face is nearly in the bowl. “No, no son, no daughter.”

The man nods deeper, threatening to dunk his chin in the soup. “Maybe tomorrow-tomorrow?”

“Maybe tomorrow-tomorrow.” Matt agrees.

They finish their meal in silence and the conversation turns to the old man’s family. He’s been married for an un-understandable number of years, has a daughter as well, and doesn’t work anymore, relying instead on his Western-employed son for income. His home is fortunately just outside Matt’s hotel, and the two bid each other a good night after sharing an easy walk through the ghostly hours of the early morning.

It’s 6am when Matt’s head hits the pillow. He’s asleep almost instantly.

Some time later the backpacker drifts awake, the pattering of the rain and the booming of the the thunderstorm outside stirring him. He rolls over in the white sheets, dozing off again in the shuttered darkness of his hotel room.

Photo is a picture of one of the many food carts in Bangkok