Being shaken in your seat, hundreds of miles above the earth, greasy beef pasta whirling around your stomach, it’s easy to feel a little flight sickness. But I’m not complaining, because I don’t think it was the food or the turbulence causing my sickness. The truth is that I simply don’t know what I’m doing.
Up until very recently I was a bookseller for Waterstones who spent most of his free time reading and writing and eating fishcakes. Now I’ve flown half way round the world with no plans to ever come back.
But I’m not alone….
Meet the Romans. They call me Seneca and they’ll be travelling with me before our paths inevitably diverge.
Meet Shane, otherwise TIBERIUS. He’s been travelling before – did three months voluntary work in Tajikistan but is hoping to get spiritual in south east Asia.
Then there’s Will, also called CALIGULA. Poor bloke put his name down wrong and was almost not allowed to board the plane. Caligula wants to make memories.
There is a third companion, but since he wasn’t travelling with us lets forget him for now.
I’m very enamoured with my daily routine. When even the slightest thing goes wrong, I can fly into a rage. Burnt my toast slightly? Poured a coffee and run out of milk? Stuck behind a slowcoach on the escalator? You name it. I’m not the person who should be doing something like this. But at twenty-five years old, backed onto the edge of a precipice, knowing that my life needed a radical shakeup but seeing no way forward other than taking the leap, I thought screw it! Let’s do this. Perhaps I was just sick of eating fishcakes.
After 11 and a half hours I staggered off the plane, my ass aching like hell. The air outside the airport was like that of an indoor swimming pool. But soon we were in a taxi, zooming under shining gold archways displaying pictures of Maha Vajiralongkorn – the King of Thailand. Buildings went by, taller and taller. We were entering not a city, but an empire of skyscrapers. A blood orange sun leaked into the smoggy sky. I’d never felt so far away from everything I’d ever known.
I felt like I should be talking excitedly and making plans, but the excitement inside me was at odds with my jet-lagged corpse of a body.
We met Luke (CAESAR) at the hotel I’d booked us somewhere in a place called Wat Arun. Caesar has come to Thailand for a laugh apparently… even though he’s in the middle of doing a P.H.D. and has multiple zoom meetings on the way…
And me? What am I looking for? Whatever it is, it’s not Pad thai that tastes like ketchup. My first meal in the rather stinky Bangkok was little less than horrendous. I call Bangkok stinky because that’s the best thing I can think of to describe it. With skinned alligators reeking of rotten meat; the smell of cat shit intermingling with air freshener round every corner, and sewage permeating the food markets – the stench of diarrhoea blowing through the stifling humidity, exhaust fumes are like a breath of fresh air.
In this cataclysm of unfamiliar chaos, beer was the biggest comfort I could find, and judging from the way my companions drank, each of them felt the same. All four of us had huge bottles of Singhas with our meal. My first taste of Thai lager. And our night became filled with Thai Lager. After leaving the disaster of a restaurant – where I also stupidly ate the raw cabbage despite being warned a thousand times not to – we sat ourselves outside a bar on Khaosan Road and chugged down half a dozen Changs.
The street was buzzing. Men approached us, popping their lips like it was some kind of social greeting, advertising a “cultural” experience I’m 99.9% sure you don’t get in London.
Trays of Scorpions were paraded before us. When I was firmly removed from the realm of sobriety, I summoned up the courage to eat one along with Tiberius.
I did it with my eyes closed and it was like eating spring rolls without the filling. Burnt spring rolls perhaps.
Then we were all making love to balloons. I hadn’t wanted to do laughing gas. There was nothing to laugh about quite frankly, only serious shit to contemplate, like why the hell am I here and what the fuck am I doing? But I was being swept on-wards by a tide of curiosity, and in the chaos of this faraway city there didn’t seem much point in swimming against it.
The exchange rate was somehow lost on us, and the night ended in arguments over money. An unfamiliar walk brought us back to cramped and unfamiliar lodging. Arguments were left unresolved. Tension was in the air and dawn fast approaching. Today has felt like day 1 of 7, or maybe even day 1 of 10. Not day 1 of 364, or 400 or eternity. Less than 24 hours ago, I was still in Barnet, North London, thinking – no, pretending – I knew what I was doing… I don’t. I can’t even remember how many beers I gulped down. It’s probably more than I think.
