"Rear! What You Do? UH." -- Chiang Mai, Thailand

I'm starting this post from Chiang Mai Hostel on Bumrung Bury Road.

Yes. That is correct. I currently reside on Bumrung Bury Road. Alley 2.

That. Sounds obscenely dirty. 

...

hehe

...

The wall in front of me is covered with patched together flower wallpaper, the air conditioner blows quietly behind me, and mosquito netting hangs above me. The blue bed on which I recline is the firmest since Nepal, but it is still significantly more forgiving than wooden planks with a thick blanket tossed over. Like an afterthought.

Which was Nepal. The land of afterthought mattresses.

A land in which "The Princess and the Pea" would make zero sense to anyone. 

I listen to a Roo Panes compilation on YouTube, which is all I seem to be playing these days. The hostel itself is quiet, but I've cranked up the volume to drown out a certain cantankerous rooster who doesn't seem to care that it's two thirty in the afternoon.
  
I suppose it's unfair to roosters to just assume that all are fond of mornings. Just as all people are not fond of mornings. This Bumrung rooster. Is not a morning rooster. He's a decidedly not morning rooster who has yet to drink his coffee. 

My blog has been woefully neglected lately. As has the book I'm reading by Thomas Mann. As has the play I'm writing for my writing club.  As has my French lessons on Duolingo.com. I've been falling behind in all these areas because my already topsy-turvy life has capsized rather suddenly into a turbulent sea of "SHIT HAPPENING ALL THE TIME".'

My days start bright and early. I groggily roll out of bed (which my top bunk at Nature's Way turned into a perilous maneuver that didn't make me many hostel friends...), pack my bag for massage school, tip-toe to the bathroom and then scamper off to the nearby market. A market at which I've discovered the most glorious fruit salad in the robust history of fruit salads.

I've also discovered an elderly British Canadian chap named Jerry. I'm not well-versed in the history of elderly British Canadian chaps named Jerry, but I'm quickly becoming attached to mine. Jerry has been dutifully obtaining his glorious fruit salad from the very same market stall every morning for the past five months.

"It's just the best," Jerry said as he took a bite of passion fruit. "Believe me, I've tried other fruit salads. And this is just the best."

"It's so good!" I crowed. Less cantankerously than my Bumrung Rooster.

Passion fruit, dragon fruit, banana, pineapple, avocado, watermelon, mango, strawberry, yogurt and muesli all make themselves well acquainted in my legendary buck fifty fruit bowl.

"I asked her if you'd been here already," Jerry's eyes lifted to the fruit woman (I must ask her name) the morning I was ten minutes late.

I experienced the sublime sensation of simply being missed.

Ten minutes late and Jerry missed me. Gosh. I love Jerry. 

On school days, I haven't much time to linger with my British Canadian. I hastily sip a frothy cappuccino as the Thai woman skillfully peels and slices our fruit and Jerry and I chat about the former Yugoslavia. Then I take my bag o' bliss to go, and skip-hop to the pick-up point at the nearby Burger King.

I hate everything America has done to the world. Blanket-statements for the win. 

The red truck with two benches in the back is scheduled to arrive between eight o'clock and eight twenty every morning. So I, of course, book it to be there by seven fifty-five.

Because that is how I do.

The red truck (known as a songthaew) usually pulls up around eight twenty-five.

Because that is how nearly the rest of the world do.

A Japanese Berliner named Maki is usually the first to arrive at the Burger King (after me, of course. Not even residents of Germany are as neurotic as I am about time). She holds a cup of hot coffee and tells me about a bakery down the road wherein she recently experienced a surprising emotional reaction to the first decent bread she'd found in Thailand. An Australian Berliner named Mickey is next amble on over, often carrying his breakfast in a small Styrofoam container. Then Carolina and her husband walk across the street from Tha Phae gate. Carolina is from Saudi Arabia. I don't know much of her story, but I love looking at her cheerful face with its dark eyes and deep laugh lines.

I like to imagine all the moments that must have transpired to create such lines.

Elke from Berlin and Juliana from Berlin also pile onto the benches of the songthaew.

There will... errr... not be a SHORTAGE of Thai Massage in Berlin... 

Sometimes we pick up another Coloradan named Wyatt, who has the most exuberantly fluffy mustache I've ever seen. I like Wyatt for his extroverted stache, but feel ever so slightly intimidated by his lifestyle. Mostly because he appears to be living one of the many lives I'd enthusiastically set out to live, but have since abandoned.

Wyatt chose the life of the traveling barefoot hippie, with no working phone, no facebook account, no real home. He chose to live close to nature. He sleeps outside when possible and avoids big cities like the plague. Wyatt is a chap who, when I ask about how long he's been traveling, stares deeply, unabashedly, quietly into my eyes and says,"I've been traveling all my life."

I think one reason I abandoned this life is because it feels so inaccessible to others. Wyatt may not (and probably doesn't) have a pretentious bone in his body... but when I ask people on this kind of hippie path seemingly straightforward questions and I get floofy answers, I just feel condescended to. Like I'm asking a stupid question. 

I remember asking a fellow in North Devon how long he'd been practicing yoga, and he made that same sort of eye contact and asked, "in this lifetime?"

YES. THE LIFETIME THAT APPLIES TO ME. I DON'T GIVE A BUMRUNG ROOSTER ABOUT ALL THE OTHER ONES YOU MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAD.

Anyway.

It's uncomfortable... prickly... to witness people happily strolling along paths I've abandoned, even though I know I had reasons for abandoning them. Seeing happy hippies and horse girls and actors makes me question the validity of the path I'm on now. Which is a terrifically useful and terrifyingly disconcerting sort of thing to question.

And since I've tried out and abandoned so many paths,  I'm confronted with this terrific terror on nearly a weekly basis. Which results in rather a lot of "WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?" moments. 

We pull up to our massage school around eight forty-five, remove our shoes and don our Thai Massage uniforms. Trousers and tunics so baggy, they make me feel like a walking, massaging refrigerator.

Well... at least I'm a comfy refrigerator. 

Eight of us file into a small classroom. A Frenchman named Francois, a Polish fellow named Marcin, a Bostonian named Kristin, two of the Berliners, a San Franciscan named William and me.

Two teachers, eight students. Well, that's promising. When I did my yoga training in Spain in 2011, there were about fifty students and two teachers. 

Which wasn't quite as intimate as I'd hoped for. Blurgh. 

Unfortunately, a small class size in no way compensates for lamentable use of the English language. When teaching a class in English to native and non-native speakers, anyway. Oh and New, our instructors, seem like sweet young women, but their accents are as thick as the mattress at the Best Western Hotel in Puerto Princesa.

I can work through the accent and piece it all together. But for people who already struggle to understand English? 

Good luck, guys. 

"Praya to the Buddha! Face the Buddha!" New directs.

So we all turn to face a portrait of a solemn, scrawny fellow on the wall. Then the monotone chanting commences. And I close my eyes and quietly wait for it to be over.

If Buddha is the type of chap Buddhism makes him out to be, I don't believe he'd much care to hear people chanting, "The Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened and Blessed One, I render homage to Buddha, the Blessed One." Just seems a bit pompous. 

But perhaps I'm just being pretentious. 

 "Okay! Yoga exercises!" Oh demonstrates a couple of basic asanas.

At around nine thirty, we finally split into partners and New demands, "Volunteeyuh! Who will be volunteeyuh? Aimee? Okay, you come volunteeyuh."

Then New or Oh demonstrate the techniques on the volunteer or voluntold.

I do my best to keep my laughter trapped inside. As a pretty, plump Thai woman jabs her fingers below my armpit and tells the class,  "Push the poi below the armpi. UH! Righ heyuh."

When the demonstration is complete, I return to my partner and attempt to recreate my instructor's movement. 

"Fi the li of the spi, okay? Uh."

Li of spi... li of spi... OH! Line of spine. That's right. 

"Sit DOW!"

Oh shouts at me as I administer pressure to a poi of the ouder li of the leg.

I giggle.

Oh looks at me, pleased that I am sitting down, but perplexed by my laughter.

"Uh. Wha so funny?"

"Hehe... nothing... I just... no. No, nothing is funny, Oh. Hehe..." 

While Oh and New are capable of demonstrating techniques, they are both completely lost when it comes to answering questions.

So we don't bother with too many of those.

It's like they have a script. And anything off-script isn't an option. 

"Huwy up! I hungwy!" Oh rubs her stomach and groans as the clock ticks closer to eleven forty-five, which is our break time. "Rear! What you do? UH."

Rear... rear... rear?

"I'm doing the inside line," Will responds.

Will understands the accents of Oh and New significantly better than I do.

Much to Oh's delight, eleven forty-five finally rolls around.

"Beautiful pillows!" New orders. "No beautiful pillows, no lunch!"

So we dutifully arrange our pillows into neat piles and file out of the classroom. We grab our wallets and dash across the busy intersection, teeming with homicidal Thai drivers.

Pedestrians get no respect in this country. 

We pop into a market, where we separate and seek out our respective lunches.

Being vegetarian in Thailand would be the worst, I think as I look at the bountiful piles of seafood and pork.

I usually settle on Khao Soi, a spicy noodle soup most commonly found in Northern Laos and Northern Thailand.

Then I guiltily purchase some variety of iced Thai drink.

I'm learning that when the word "Thai" is inserted in front of a beverage, it really just means, "added condensed milk". 

I've visited this Thai iced beverage stand so many times that I, Aimee Bourget the vagabond, have acquired a punch card. 

Having a punch card with more than one stamp just... feels homey. Like I'm a part of something.

We return to school at one o'clock and begin our afternoon session with yoga exercises. We take a fifteen minute banana break at two forty-five and then continue to press, twist, jab each other until three forty-five.

"Finish! We finish!" Oh yells. "Beautiful pillows! No beautiful pillows, no go home!"

It's four thirty by the time I'm dropped off in front of the Burger King. I'm exhausted. My body aches from giving and receiving massages.

Thai massage can be gratuitously painful. 

Like a Mel Gibson film. 

I spend the rest of my evenings ambling through markets, 

-- visiting parks,

-- laughing at funny signs,

Almost people. Like, not quite people, but mostly there.

I want to know who provides the sexy dance.

Because I need clarification about what "extra" means.

But what does "Pink" taste like?

I will live in a perpetual state of not knowing whether or not I know.

I meet with massage friends for dinner at the South Gate Market. I share with Francois the French pick up lines I've learned on Duolingo.

"Ca t'a fait mal quand tu es tombée du ciel?"

Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?

"Tu es si chaude que j'ai attrapé un coup desoleil."

You are so  hot I got a sunburn. 

"Il fait chaud ici, ou bien est-ce juste toi?"

Is it hot in here, or is it just you? 

"Je ne suis pas saoul, je suis juste ivre de vous."

I am not drunk, I am just intoxicated by you.

"Meme sans gravité sur Terre, je tomberais amoureux de toi."

Even without gravity on earth, I would still fall in love with you. 

Francois is a good sport, and doesn't condemn my abysmal pronunciation. But he does say that these cliché lines sound better in English.

Maybe they sound better when I say them in English. 'Cos I can't speak French. But in general... God, no.  

I return to my bed by eight or nine. Sometimes I skype, sometimes I netflix, sometimes I online scrabble.

Sometimes I absently wonder where my spontaneous Russian roommate/classmate has run off to. She always seems to be getting lost somewhere. And enjoying herself immensely.

While Skyping, netflixing or scrabbling, I occasionally receive messages from Francois. With pictures of my Russian up a tree at ten o'clock at night near one of the main markets.

"Okay, you definitely live with a crazy Russian girl." 

The BEST crazy Russian girl. 

Tomorrow starts week two of my Thai massage training. I'll try to pay more attention to my neglected blog, but I can't promise much.

I may or may not spend my free evenings playing in the park, eating street food and locating my happily lost Russian.

An Intelligent Person's Feet -- Chiang Mai, Thailand

I'm starting this post from my top bunk in a female dorm in Nature's Way Guesthouse. After the masturbating Belgian in Kosovo incident, I make more of an effort to bunk with ladies. One of whom is sitting on the floor near the fan and green locker, charging her phone on one of the rare outlets and telling me all about her asexual nephew.

"Seriously!" she declares. "He doesn't like sex! He's forty years old and has never had a girlfriend."

Well... I mean... that's one possible conclusion. 

Bee is a sixty year old Malaysian woman who often abandons her husband in Singapore to romp about the world. 

"I told him before we married. I told him, "You cannot have my independence. I won't take yours, and you won't take mine. If you can't agree to that, then we won't get married." And of course, he agreed. Well, what do you think? He wanted to get me in bed! When you meet someone, you have to tell them right off. Men like to control women. So you have to tell them you need your independence before you get married."

hehe... I'm pretty sure my need for independence is the only thing more glaringly apparent than my powerful legs. 

"It's good that you're traveling while you're young," Bee continued. 

"Well, I'm not really that young," I countered.

"How old are you?"

"I turn twenty-eight in May."

"But you look so young! Most Westerners never look young. They seem so old. But you look like you could be twenty-two!"

Never heard that before...

"It must be because you travel. Travel keeps people young."

Or makes them sick ALL THE TIME, I resentfully considered my aching throat and scratchy eyes.

I just... want to have a full day wherein I don't hurt.

I've grown quite fond of Bee during my three days at Nature's Way. She's bursting with energy, chocked full of stories, and is always bringing home bags of Thai goodies she's bought at the market.

"Aimee, I have to show you something. I bought this bag of rice, this big bag of rice, for ten baht. Can you believe that? That's soooooo cheap! And this -- I don't know what this is. Mmm... it smells spicy. I bought it at the market for fifteen baht! You have to go early, that's the thing. Thai people wake up early, so early. Two, three in the morning! They go to the market and buy all their food for the whole day, so all the good food is gone like that. But I went out at six this morning. While you were sleeping. And I found rice porridge with little shrimps for only twenty baht! It was soooooo cheap!"

(You'll notice I don't do a whole lot of talking during our... errr... exchanges)

Then Bee invites me to taste her mostly unidentifiable food in plastic bags.

(You'll notice that "invite" is a rather soft way of putting it)

"Let's get DRUNK together!" Bee opened up her rice wine and thrust spoonfuls of fermented white rice into my mouth. Before I had time to agree or disagree to the whole "getting drunk together" activity.

Guess I'm getting drunk with Bee. 

I asked Matt why weird shit always happens to me. Matt says it's just because I make a habit of just going with things, while most people tend to back out at the first whiff of crazy.

Seems about right.  

"Aimee, you have to try this!" Bee rushed at me as I was mid-chaturanga on the linoleum floor.

"No, Bee, I brushed my teeth!" I protested from my plank.

"Oh, shut up and eat!" Bee stuffed some sort of vegetable into my mouth. 

My first night at Nature's Way, I spent ten minutes in the common area to charge my laptop. When I hopped upstairs to our dorm, I noticed I had accumulated about twenty mosquito bites on my stubby feet and ankles.

The heartless little bastards. Couldn't they have at least spread out the bloodbath a bit? 

I smeared some anti-itch cream onto my feasted upon feet and sighed.

Lesson learned. Don't hang out in the common area after dusk. 

But I hate lessons like this. Why can't I learn lessons like where the most delicious ice cream in the world lives and how to get it whenever I want for free and not gain any weight? Where's THAT lesson?

Bee romped into the room as I was irritably shoving the cream back into my bag.

"What happened to your feet?" she demanded. "Oh, they are so puffy. I have to take a picture. A picture of your puffy feet."

Then Bee whipped out her iPhone and photographed my feet. And her feet, too. Because (you'll notice that I'll get a bit racist here)  Bee is Asian, and needed to be part of the picture.

"Mosquitoes like you!" Bee gushed. "You must be very intelligent. Mosquitoes only like intelligent people. They can't be bothered with unintelligent blood. Psh." 

Then she emailed the photo to me. God knows why. But the subject of her email was, "An Intelligent Person's Feet."

She also emailed me a selfie.

Because, she's, errr...

Asian?

Good lord, I'm a horrible person.

When I'm not eating Bee's food in bags or learning about the sexual inclinations of her relations, I'm wandering Chiang Mai.

I hear pigeons, geckos, yappy dogs, motorbikes, rickshaws, and French.

I believe half of France is in Chiang Mai at this moment. 

I smell cigarettes, car exhaust, crepes (half of France is here, after all), sewage, coffee, and deep-fried-god-knows-what.

It is my remarkably uneducated opinion that most of Asia smells like deep-fried-god-knows-what.

I see a hippie cafe. A shop selling comfy, garish pants. Dreadlocks. A restaurant advertising Thai food or western breakfast or -- 

A  7/11. Temple. Dreadlocks. Massage parlor. 7/11. Tattoo parlor. 7/11. Dreadlocks. Temple. Tourist shop advertising a veritable menagerie of activities with elephants.

7/11.

Dreadlocks. 

This is what wandering through Chiang Mai feels like.

What's with the 7/11 infatuation? 

Bee had told me that I just "had to taste," this drink called Meiji. And that Meiji could be found at 7/11 (so pretty much every third building).

"You won't be disappointed!" she promised.

Because I've grown rather fond of Bee (as you've probably noticed), I guiltily entered the chain store and purchased the coffee flavored milk.

Only for you, Bee. Only for you. 

Eh... I'm a little disappointed, I thought as I sipped the glorified milk.

The colors of Chiang Mai are glorious. The glistening golds, 

 

-- redolent reds,

-- and playful pinks. 

I'm glad I have three weeks with which to absorb this vibrant, easy-going, hippie-infested city.

Why I will never again book a train immediately after a plane.

Texture.

"Aimee!" Bee interrupts me from my writing. "Did you know that the scientific name for gooseberry is "ribus grossularia." That's R-I-B-U-S-G-R-O-S-S-U-L-A-R-I-A. I love gooseberries. And they're so cheap in Thailand. I got this whole bag for twenty baht! Can you believe it?"

Bee leaves this hostel in a few days. I will miss her energy, her enthusiasm for all things food and her generosity, but I will not miss having unidentifiable vegetables stuffed into my mouth whilst mid-chaturanga. Or being interrupted from my work to be told the scientific name for gooseberry.

Just Married? -- Chiang Mai, Thailand.

I'm starting this post from Zakka Cafe in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Jazz music plays softly in the background, two yappy dogs go berserk across the street from me and the occasional moped rumbles past. 

A blue cat surreptitiously slinks under the table to my left, setting the yappy dogs off again.

"Hey, hey, hey!" a man with a yellow shirt and orange dangling earring slaps one of the dogs across the face. 

I mean... I don't particularly enjoy yapping, but face slapping is not the answer. 

I am abundantly happy to be in Chiang Mai right now. Drinking my creamy cappuccino out of a gorgeous clay mug, watching the backpackers trudge past and wishing the blue cat luck in evading all the yappy dogs. 

I'm so happy partially because this area of Chiang Mai seems lovely. Peaceful, bursting with good coffee, clever kitties and Wi-Fi that doesn't only sometimes sort of work. 

But mostly, I'm happy because I'm here at all. It almost didn't happen. 

Trains running in between Bangkok and Chiang Mai fill up quickly. I booked my ticket through a travel agency (because it's impossible to book tickets directly from the train station online) ten days in advance, and there were only four available seats at the time. I'd hoped to catch the train that left Bangkok at ten pm on the seventeenth, giving me plenty of time to play with between landing in Suvarnabhumi Airport, but that train was full. 

Damn. 

So I was left with the train that departed from Hua Lamphong station at seven thirty-five pm. 

Okay... so, my plane lands at three thirty pm. Let's say it takes an hour and a half to get through immigration, baggage claim and ATM shenanigans. This has me leaving the airport by five. Then it'll probably take me about an hour to get from the airport to the travel agency where I pick up my ticket. So, hopefully, I can arrive at the 12Go Asia office by six. Which gives me half an hour of wiggle room, because if I don't pick up my ticket by six thirty-five, they give it away. 

I hate having only thirty-five minutes of wiggle room. I hate it so much. But my only other option is to cancel my first night in Chiang Mai, book a hostel in Bangkok instead, and catch the train the next day. 

Against my better judgement, I booked the seven thirty-five train with the meager thirty-five minutes of wiggle room. 

  

Andrej and I caught a cab to the airport Friday morning at eleven o'clock. Our last couple of days together had been spectacular, full of jungle walks -- 

-- waterfalls,

-- Aimee finally standing under waterfalls, 

-- soft sunsets,

-- and cheese.

Cheese... how I've missed you... and how have I survived this long without you?

Andrej and I said goodbye at Terminal 1 of Manila's International Airport.

"See you soon, Cat," he hugged me.

"See you soon. Thanks for everything. This has been such a beautiful trip."

I love saying goodbye to Andrej. I love it because I know I'll see him again in a few months. 

My flight was scheduled to depart at one ten in the afternoon, but at one o'clock, we had yet to board.

And there goes my itty-bitty wiggle room. Fuck. 

We flew out of Manila International Airport at nearly one forty-five.

I can still make it. If everything else works out, I'll be fine, I tried to console myself as my anxious mind did its worst-case-scenario thing.

The worst-case-scenario is I miss my train and have to stay in Bangkok until the next available train. Which could be a week from now. Which means I'd miss my first five days of massage school. 

Why didn't I just book the train for tomorrow? Oof. Never again, Bourget. Never again. Go with your gut next time and give yourself all the time you need to get from A to B. 

The flight attendants never passed out immigration cards, so I assumed we didn't need them (like in Malaysia). However, upon disembarking, I promptly discovered that we did, in fact, need them. And there were none available at the counter, so I had to hunt down an airport employee to find a spare. Then I high-tailed it to immigration, rudely weaving in and out of other passengers in my haste.

HOLY FUCKING HELL. 

That's it. I'm missing my train. 

I gaped in hopeless defeat at the longest immigration line I'd seen in my life of travel thus far.

"Excuse me," I approached an official at the side of the line. "I have a really important connection at Hua Lamphong station. If I wait in this line, I'm pretty sure I'll miss it. Is there any way for people with connections to get to the front of the line?"

"No," he smiled at my dismay. "Not possible."

Okay. Well, I tried. 

It was five thirty before my passport was stamped. I sprinted to carousel 14 to retrieve Ellie, and found --

-- nothing.

Awesome. 

"My luggage is missing. I flew here from Manila. It was supposed to be on belt 14, but it isn't there," I spouted off to the first uniformed person I could find.

"Go to missing luggage," she gestured down the hall.

"Where?"

"There," she pointed rather vaguely again.

After frantically asking three more people, I managed to locate Ellie in Thai Airways Missing Luggage.

Okay. So. It's five forty-five. Now what? Now I have to withdraw cash, find the Airport Rail Link, buy a ticket and board. 

I waited in line at the ATM. I waited in line for the ticket. I rushed towards the train, and arrived just as it was pulling away from the station.

I may or may not have cried a little bit. 

Alighting the Airport Rail Link at Makkasan Station, I shot across the skywalk and found myself in yet another line.

Last ticket to buy. 

Again, the train to Hua Lamphong pulled away just as I arrived.
 
Six thirty-one, I looked at my phone. So close. So, so close. 

"Excuse me," I accosted the perfectly innocent fellow to my right. "Can you help me? I'm late to pick up my ticket for a train. If I'm not there by 6:35, they'll give it away. If it doesn't cost you any money, can you call this number? Then I can tell them that I'm on my way and ask if they can hold onto my ticket for a few more minutes."

The perfectly innocent fellow made the call.

"Sure, we'll hold onto your ticket. See you soon," the receptionist at 12Go Asia reassured me.

Thank. God. 

I tiredly, triumphantly flung open the door of 12Go Asia's office at six fifty pm. The Thai woman with an impeccable English accent handed me my ticket and said, a little amused, "Your train leaves in about half an hour. You should probably head over."

"Yes. Yes, I know. I'm on my way."

Platform six, train thirteen, car two, seat twenty-seven. There you are, you beautiful, marvelous, spectacular bit of cushion. How unequivocally happy I am to see you. 

I settled down into seat twenty-seven and immediately blurted out my entire saga to the poor American girl named Ashley in seat twenty-eight. She took it well (she's a clinical psychology student and was probably thinking... "hmmm... this person has anxiety... is a bit manic... probably suffering from... ), but after sharing a few other stories, she pulled out her e-book. Which I interpreted as a clear sign to leave her in peace, so I tuned out to RadioLab until an employee came along to make up the beds.

I get to sleep in a BED. On a TRAIN. How absolutely delightful. 

The train slowly wobbled on its rails through the quiet night, rumbling to a stop every now and then to pick up a passenger or two.

Mmm... I snuggled up with my blanket on the top bunk. This is deliciously cosy. And soothing. And I still can't believe I actually caught the train. 

"Where are you staying?" I asked Ashley in the morning.

"Mi Casa. You?"

"Nature's Way. If they're close together, do you want to share a cab?"

"Sure!"

We tumbled out of the train at eight forty and made our way to the information desk.

"Excuse me," I displayed our two addresses. "Can you tell me how far these are from each other?"

"Walking, ten minutes."

"Okay, that's grand. We can go to your hostel first, and then I can walk to mine," I told Ashley.

"One hundred and fifty for taxi," the man told us.

"That's fine," I did the quick math.

Thirty-five baht is one dollar. So about two dollars each. 

Ashley and I were led to a taxi reminiscent of the colectivos I'd ridden in Mexico. As in, it was a truck with benches in the back.

"Hotel address?" the driver asked Ashley.

"Mi Casa," she replied.

"What?"

"MI CASA."

"What?"

"Here," she showed him the address and he squinted at the paper.

Super. So our driver appears to be partially deaf and blind. 

After squinting for a few moments, the driver nodded slowly and then started the engine.

"What's that sound?" I asked Ashley as we rattled off down the road.

"It sounds like what they put on "Just Married" cars," she wrinkled her forehead in confusion.

"Yeah. It does."

Everyone we passed turned to look at us. People pointed fingers and laughed. I made eye-contact with the amused locals and tourists alike, giggling and shrugging my shoulders.

"Just married?" a fellow on a motorcycle yelled as he drove past.

"We only met yesterday!" I crowed.

"I work fast," Ashley grinned.

Our deaf/blind driver slowed to a stop in front of Mi Casa Hostel and Ashley and I jumped out of the back, wide grins plastered across our faces.

"What?" the driver peered below the truck in absolute surprise and removed a string with three cans attached to it.

"HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW!" I nearly cried for the second time in the last twenty-four hours, but this time from pure mirth.

Ashley checked into her hostel and I connected to the Wi-Fi so that I could locate mine.

"Wanna grab dinner tonight?" I asked my new spouse. "I mean, if we're married, we should probably go on a date."

So we exchanged WhatsApp numbers and parted ways.

What a nuts first day in Thailand.