This just got real.

Last night/today have been a doozy. Before I get into that, here are some pictures from my last day in Bangkok:

Breakfast

On the way to Khao San Road

Morning rush hour? I’m not sure, but it was crazy.

No differences here. I had to try it - don’t judge me.

A coffee shop called Chomp. The place belongs to a really sweet Indian lady from the UK. It felt like a Seattle coffee shop in there :) She seemed to take a lot of pride in her business, and rightfully so. She gave me her recipe for her delicious homemade chai tea:

Street food. Enough said.

The plan for today was to check out of the hostel and hang out around town until 5:30pm to catch a ten hour overnight bus to Chiang Mai - a large town in northern Thailand, not near as crazy as Bangkok. I had a nice day just moseying around. Then came the bus ride. Earlier in the day, I met a really nice gal from the UK, Caroline, who happened to be catching the same bus as me. When 5:30 rolled around, we shared a cab to the bus station and waited with about 20 other backpackers for our ride. We swapped stories and talked about how we ended up in Bangkok. Caroline has been an ER nurse for five years and decided to make a change when three female patients her age passed away in the same week in her unit. I can’t blame her for that. She’s been travelling for nine months now and will finish up early next year to become a midwife - super interesting conversation topic. I had no idea that midwifery was the standard birthing process in the UK. Vice versa, she was very surprised to hear that women typically give birth in a hospital with a doctor in the states. We talked about a lot, topics including her meeting her first mormons in Uganda, explaining to her what/where Samoa is, and how their university tuitions have risen to a whopping $9,000 a year (uh, sign me up?!).

The bus. The description of the “coach” was that there would be a toilet, a movie, a/c, and a blanket for each passenger. Not terrible sounding. Indeed, there was a TV at the front of the bus, but may as well have not been there. I don’t think it was even plugged in, not to mention there was no way the folks in the back would have been able to see anything. But, this didn’t bother me since I wasn’t planning on watching a movie at midnight anyhow. There was air conditioning which felt great. I was also able to score two empty seats to somewhat stretch out. We were about three hours into it when nature called. Next came the two most challenging bathroom situations I’ve ever come across. I’ll apologize in advance for this. I swear the “toilet” on the bus could have been straight out of a trailer park version of The Hobbit. First of all, I was taller than the height of the door sitting down. The space was about 3’x3’, had a sink full of garbage, a bucket of water with a tupperware container in it (for manual flushing), what looked like the bottom half of a rusted metal toilet, no tp, and a door that wouldn’t stay closed without holding it. Score. Also, the metal toilet and bucket o’ water took up all but a sliver of the floor space for foot/leg room. A challenge for my Samoan trunks.The one thing I did right was bring my own tp. Game over otherwise. So, one hand holding the door at all times, no standing room, self supplied tp in a bag, and a moving bus with a sloshing water bucket all cozy-like. Now that I’ve painted this Thomas Kincaid-esque picture for you, just imagine how this would go for anyone. Admittingly, I was kind of proud of myself when I got back to my seat. “Way to mind-over-matter the hell out of the situation, Aufai. We are not doing that again.” About two hours later, we pulled into a gas station for a 20 minute break. This was perfect since it was about that time again (I’m pretty sure the bumpy ride had my system in a funk). I made my way to the glowing fluorescent building, looking forward to a more pleasant picture this time. Nope. I had encountered my first “squat-style” toilet - a very regular thing in Asia. Yaaaaayyyyyyy.

This is a picture off the internet, but I thought it would help the imagination. For the curious, here’s a sweet user’s manual: http://www.monkeyabroad.com/asian-toilets-step-by-step-guide/

I knew this was coming, but that didn’t help. Again, manual flush, no tp. Go ahead. Put yourself there :) No pride this time.

To wrap it up, we got to Chiang Mai at 7am. I piled into a taxi truck cab with 10 other folks and we each got dropped off at our different hostels. I got dropped off second and parted ways with Caroline.

Here’s my home for the next 7 nights. And yes, it has a western style toilet :):