I am a man of preparation. I tend to follow the old adage, "measure twice and cut once." I always check all of my equipment many times over before going out on a camping trip, scuba diving, rock climbing, you name it. Even before I go for a drive I have a habit of checking all the basic systems of the vehicle. I'm trained in multiple forms of emergency rescue. I know how to land a small airplane in an emergency. Likewise, I read a lot. I research everything I may need to know about an upcoming experience, be it a purchase, a class selection, or my next destination. Thus, after talking to countless souls and reading an immeasurable amount of text on traveling to Thailand I was mortified to find myself caught off-guard upon encountering a major, nay, an essential fact about this country that every one of my sources had neglected to reveal: they drive on the left-hand side of the road.
Imagine now, if you will, my utmost fear upon getting off of the border-crossing bus in Nong Khai and attempting to cross the street. I look to the left, see that all is clear and step off the curb. As I turn my head to the right to check the next lane of traffic, my gaze is suddenly met by an all-too-near van coming right at me, horn blaring. "Fucking idiot!," I think as the Thai driver swerves around me but returns to the left-hand side of the road. Then I notice the orientation of all of the parked cars. As a new stream of left-handed traffic passes by my paralyzed form, it dawns on me that I have been defeated. Wrong-sided traffic has eluded all of my detection systems and breached my perimeter of preparedness. Congratulations Thailand, you and your incorrect road rules have forced me to submit to you, the victor. Here is my sword, my gun and badge, my white flag. That said, you have my word that this will never happen again. You have been warned, Alderney, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bermuda, Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei, Caymans, Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Dominica, East Timor, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Grenada, Guernsey, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Macau, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Motserrat, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, North Korea, Pakistan, Papau New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Cunha, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Kingdom, British Virgin Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
And they put bunnies in dresses. Weirdos.
Before I was sabotaged by all of the current travel literature on Thailand, I spent a few days trekking through the jungles of northern Laos. It was some really incredible hiking through the thick of the jungle in a protected area near the border of China. The first day had a lot of rain, which meant the trail was more or less a solid sheet of mud for the eight-ish hours of hiking. In the sections where bushwhacking was required, the underbrush was too thick to really fall per se, as I was more occupied with not getting trapped in the endless thickets of reeds, brambles, and vines. The more passable regions turned into something of a filthy and painful ice-skating path. It was like a shittier version of cross-country skiing, which is saying a lot because that "sport" is terrible enough as it is. The last hour or so was a constant downhill series of switchbacks, with little in the way of handholds and an incredible amount of tumbling. I was the first non-guide to make it down to the night's camp, with the last of my group arriving at least an hour later. Yet as exhausted as I was, for some reason I couldn't fall asleep on my single-banana-leaf-bed. So strange.
I can see China!
The next day was much drier and resulted in a much more pleasant hike. Before heading out, I happened to ask the guide how difficult the hiking would be, as the group seemed awfully worn from the previous days inundation of mud. He thought about it for a moment, and then says, "Easy." "Easy? Well that's nice." "Yes, easy. But difficult." "Difficult?" I ask, confused, "But you just said easy." "Yes, yes," the guide insists, "Easy but difficult." I thought about that for a while, looked at him and said, "You, sir, are a terrible guide." After about five hours of easy but difficult hiking, we arrived at a tribal mountain village. After bathing in the stream and having every child in the village follow us to show off their back-flips into two feet of water, we bought a duck for dinner. The duck was a real trooper, hardly complained as the back of its neck was sliced open for it to bleed to death. But damn was it tasty. Being a guest of honor, I was given the finest bed on a bamboo mat next to the pigs' sty. Another splendid night of sleep.
I'm mostly sure they had no intention to eat me.
After some kayaking and finally returning to civilization, I was finally faced with the necessity to take a twenty hour bus all the way back down to Vientiane. All right, I figured, I've seen the Lao sleeper buses and they don't seem all that bad. I've got some movies on my laptop and a new book to read. I'll just hunker down and probably sleep for most of the ride. Unfortunately, my booking agent cheated me and I was put on a local bus, sitting upright and with little room to move, surrounded by vomiting Lao's and assaulted by Lao karaoke for twenty-three hours straight. It seems as if Southeast Asia is testing me, trying to figure out what my breaking point with public transportation is. Dammit, I shall remain steadfast!
A couple visits to the Thai embassy and a day at the sauna later, and I'm in Thailand. Thailand! I've successfully made it to all four of my originally planned destinations. Everything from here on out is anybody's guess. But for the time being, I am enjoying Thailand a good bit. The food is just incomparable. I can still see Laos across the Mekong from my guesthouse, yet the food is orders of magnitude better here than what lies on the other side of that ubiquitous body of water. Last night, I indulged an the most mouth-watering plate of pad thai that I've ever had the good fortune to shove chopsticks into. You know how much it set me back? One dollar. One damned dollar. The beer's a little more expensive here than elsewhere in the region, but with food this cheap and absurdly delicious, I am not one to complain. Hell, I may even be able to overlook the incorrect driving arrangements.
And who can say no to that?
