Some 10+ hours later we arrived in Bangkok. The first thing we noticed upon exiting the plane and heading down the gangway,was how incredibly different the air temperature was here from Europe. It was a change we had both been welcoming for some time, and we couldn't be happier. Before even thinking of exiting the airport, we went in the bathrooms and changed into our board shorts and t-shirts, which we would wear exclusively the rest of our trip.Zanes funds being what they were at this point in our journey, that is to say, almost nothing... we decided to both exchange a small amount at a time and try and manage it well, so we went with $50 each. We grabbed our bags, exited security and headed for the skytrain, which started underground ironically enough. We got our little plastic chip tokens from the machines lining the wall and stood in lines waiting for the security guards to check the train before anyone got on, then boarded.It wasn't long before we arrived in downtown Bangkok, the heat and pollution was depressing, even in the evening, and we soon boarded the city train heading for the central train station. It was 4:50pm, we had been planning on getting our tickets for an 10:50pm train to Surat Thani, which would have given us time to rest and get some food before trying to go through a 15 hour train ride to the South of Thailand, but just as we arrived and found the office for "foreign speakers" meaning English only pretty much, they told us every sleeper train ticket was sold out until the next day, except the last two tickets leaving at 5pm, which was in 2 minutes...We hadn't slept in the last 50 hours, had been in 3 Countries, six time zones, and had been partying like sailors, used four city trains, two taxis, and three subways, boarded and endured consecutive flights totaling 15 hours, gone from Snow to Monsoon weather, and were facing the sorry predicament of staying in a city we had no intention of being in overnight, or pushing ourselves to even greater limits in a all out push to our destination. This is Daniel Maddox and Zane Davis were talking about here, The "Elite" of exceeding the fun limits...We looked at the classic black and white circular wall clock above the lady selling tickets, the 2 minutes we had to decide evaporating into midair much like our strength and poise, then at each other. With sullen smirks etched on both our faces, but raw determination in our hearts, we nodded in unison and bought the tickets. I was pretty worried we'd have no food on the train, but once we found our seats a catering boy came by to take our orders, we gladly paid.We barely spoke on the ride, mostly all we wanted to do was sleep. What little thoughts we had outside of that essential need, were of what was to come on the "dazzling endless summer isles of paradise" we had so perfectly burned into our minds by the advertising armies of the world. A fiction to be sure, this I knew well from my travels, but a fairy tale I entertained for the sake of convenience in a mad hope that our final leg of our travels on this trip would be more relaxing and charming than that of Europe.As the sun disappeared into the West, the cabin crew started setting up the beds in the sleeper trains. Once ours were set up and our gear was reassuringly stowed away in the racks beside us, our food was brought, which if you can imagine, was super cheap Asian food individually wrapped in Sa ran wrap, on a plastic plate, itself wrapped, and then all of it wrapped in Sa ran wrap again... I suppose they thought it was pretty classy, I didn't, but it did keep our food from spilling all over us while bumping all around on the train tracks, that probably had a lot to do with it. We finished our food and we did what we could to sleep, which, to our great dismay, would prove most difficult.
Rules of the Game
This morning we went down to the kitchen for our complimentary breakfast. We had never been even remotely early enough for it before today so we figured it was time to check it out. There were lunch meats, white bread, jam, and cereals. Zane chose cereal and I sat comfortably watching our hostel friends serve the other guests. Zane finished eating, We wrapped up and headed out. Since there wasn't anything for me at Wow, we returned again to Venkel and ordered up unique salad creations. Now that was a breakfast! While we were in the city we went back to the same coffee shop as before and Zane got some cheese, a strain of Marijuana that stinks like cheese lol, he smoked while I wrote post cards to some people back home. We were surrounded on all sides by British people with super heavy slanged accents, everyone of them ordered a ham and cheese toasty, which is exactly what it sounds like, and they talked across the room to each other in such loud, thickly accentuated accents that it was priceless to be in the middle of. After a short snooze back at the hostel we were once again back in the red light district, going from one bar and ordering only one beer before moving on to the next. We came to this one place with a pool table, with probably 30 people there. While waiting to get a game in on the pool table, one of the girls already playing, it was couple vs couple, came over to us and asked us if we were twins. "Brothers" we say in unison. "Ohh, thats just fantastic" she says "what are you doing here alone?" Referring to the bar. "Were waiting to play pool." At this she snaps her neck around to her friends and quickly organizes an already finished game to its now official end. She then sets up a joint venture between all three groups, a 2v2. Zane and the other teams man, vs me and this girls boyfriend. They tell us that they're here in Amsterdam from London on a 3 day vacation from their busy lives back home. Her boyfriend tells us he's a surfing champion and an avid sportsman, while she works at a job she rather wouldn't and is looking for an exit. While were talking she scribbles on two bar notes a rendition of both Zane and myself. Zane didn't keep his but I did.Her boyfriend and I do pretty bad in the beginning of the game but I pull off a great run to the 8 ball in the end. I'm about to finish the game and then the girl takes the stick from me and demands the last shot. Now normally this would constitute a deal breaker and game ender anyways, since No one agreed to it or desired it, but I didn't verbalize it, so it slid. She then hits the white ball straight passed the 8 ball and into the hole thereby loosing the game for us, throwing the stick down on the table and arguing that such a move doesn't qualify a loss where she comes from, she slams her drink and hugs her boyfriend. With that she and her friends move outside to join the rest of their group. Zane and I play a few games between ourselves and the establishment tells us that the pool table is now closed. It was like 9pm and plenty of people around wanting to play pool so we thought this was really strange but hey, we followed the rules. We drank our beers and I made the call to join our new friends outside. There we are introduced to a new a couple, these from Ireland. All was well until I had to go pushing buttons I knew very well led to deeply rooted passions. You see, its never good enough to just have any conversation, ohh no, Danny needs there to be passion, Danny needs to force people to care so much they want to scream, and often do... Especially drunk Danny, he see's a rift in someone and for him there's only one thing to do, expose it! Tear it open and make that person recognize it's existence and how much its affecting them. We all have these rifts, and deal with them in our own way, but drunk Danny thinks he can and should help you with them. Drunk Danny is very lucky he hasn't been hurt by people he's trying to help by making them unstable... His friends remind him of this often.Anyways, back to our story. I ask him if Ireland is in anyway considered apart of Great Britain and his eyes light up like someone just kicked him in the balls but missed the mark and he's pumped for the counter attack, this is the beginning of an hour and a half thyraid into the uniqueness of Ireland and its supreme place in the world as a beacon of independence and sovereignty against imperial rule. His girlfriend and Zane were sitting next to us but they might as well have been in a different dimension, this guy had seen red and was completely transfixed on our conversation, or should I say, his argument. After realizing he was in no way capable of allowing any of my words to even escape my lips we parted ways gracefully as Zane and I entered another bar as they walked on. The place we entered was a karaoke bar, filled to the brim with young people from all over Europe. Before we even got inside we were helping the bar staff carry a waisted girl outside. This sparked a meeting between us and these young Belgian girls about life and everything they hope yo do with it. We very quickly went into life's great mysteries and uncertainties, and then, after going into the bar and getting this girls friend two glasses of water, she comes to and goes into the bar, again getting kicked out by the staff. Then they just disappear on us. Naturally we missed the last normal bus home so we endeavored to finally find these rumored night buses. After running around the empty train station we came to the bus station above it in the back. After sitting there in the freezing cold for an hour, waiting for any bus that would take us home, Zane told me that if a bus didn't arrive soon he was taking a taxi. "Just 10 more minutes I said, it will be here."Just as I said this two random guys from who knows which area of the world showed up asking us were to find the night bus to Bos en lommerweg, and just as they asked us our bus drove by on the other side of the divide, we all sprinted after it in unison. It stopped, the driver was unresponsive inside and I knew he was on his break before starting up again. So I sat down and relaxed while person after person bothered him on his break. 15 minutes later the bus turned around and we had to run all the way to end of the causeway, something like a football field and a half. We got on and made it home by 3am, those guys who asked us about the bus are staying at wow as well. Small world.
Venkel
I was hung over In the am, by mid-day we strolled out the doors heading for the tram station, stopping at the store for water.The tram we took was supposedly going to get us pretty close to this place I read up on online named Venkel, the reviews said that they made wonderful, locally sourced salads, so I was keen to try it. Although I had picked the right train number, It was going in the opposite direction, and so, before realizing this, we came to the end of the line on the other end of the city. Zane was apt to point out my failing, especially since I had been poring through my map and the transit system grid lines the whole time without once being able to definitively tell us where we were, or where we were going.The large, red hair dyed Italian conductress was not the least bit enthusiastic about her job. As she sat there behind tempered shatterproof glass, absentmindedly handing out the tickets customers requested, she was filing her already ridiculously sharp fake nails, which were much the same color as her dyed hair. When I asked her how to get to where we had intended to go she told us to go back to Bos en lomnerweg. I tried to clarify further and her response was that of unbridled annoyance, "You didn't understand me?! You go back!" She snapped, and that concluded our foray into the conductresses world. Once we figured out where to go, from a much more approachable conductress, they all seem to be women on the trams in Amsterdam, we got off on the outskirts of city center and walked to Venkel. We got the first two items on the menu and were very pleased with our choices. The establishment was run by a woman, and she had two young ladies helping her out. It was peaceful, clean, and very nourishing. Once recharged, we set off into the heart of the city, yet again walking every avenue that drew us in, looking for a Coffee Shop that would suit us. Which in our case meant quite, clean and in possession of a bong. For those of you who think this is an easy list to satisfy, think again, we went into several places and none of them had a bong, were all packed and loud as hell. Eventually though we ended up on the same street we took the night of our arrival in Amsterdam. There was a neat place there that had upstairs and downstairs seating, with a central floor area for eating food they made behind a small kitchen and a place for buying the strains you wanted from the desk in front. It was quite, in that there was no music blasting over us, so we could hear each other, and they had a wall of perfectly clean bongs. Before I knew this for a fact and before we even ordered anything I went in back to ask if they had one, as I had in the other establishments that met the other two requirements, being clean and quiet, and the lady disappeared, came back with a bong, still with a carb, filled it with ice, to cool down the smoke for a more enjoyable experience, and handed it to me. Zane saw this and ordered a gram of something, while I went upstairs and found us a spot at a long dark table placed to the left of a wall surrounded by comfy padded seating build into the wall. We smoked there until we were both twisted, leaving in a haze and coming out somehow worse for wear into the busy streets of Amsterdam. I say worse for wear because somehow Zane's foot was in a lot of pain and my stomach was cramping tight like my fists were during my Sapo (frog poison immunity) experiences in Peru. It was as if I was having a panic attack, in truth I think I was... Marijuana does this to me sometimes, especially when my tolerance is low and Im in unfamiliar circumstances. Within a minutes of really painful cramps I finally got my breathing right and they vanished, just like that. Zane wasn't so lucky, his problem was getting worse. Not wanting to drag him around for a place to eat that suited my diet, which he has insisted on, I chose a place with nice decor and a warm atmosphere nearby. We both had the coconut tomato soup and I ordered veggie spring rolls with a greek salad. We took the bus home and decided on a game of pool in the lobby before bed. Zane was sweeping the floor with me until he missed the 3rd to last ball, then I sunk 5 in a row and missed the 6th. He sunk his next shot but missed the next and I finished with the 8 ball corner pocket shot. Another fun day in the this wild city.