31st
Focus
My first and only post about my time in Bangkok was highly unstructured and unfocused. I’ve since decided that, for the sake of digestion, I should cut my posts into smaller bites.
My trip to Pattaya was the most serious chillin’ I’ve done in my entire life. We left Bangkok around 7am and drove for about an hour to the coast. As soon as we got there, a young guy dressed in what I can only describe as Thai hipster garb approached our group, comprised of my cousin’s friend, her family, her brother’s family, my aunt, and myself. There was a brief exchange concerning location and price (I surmised) and we were seated in lounge chairs under the vast expanse of umbrellas closest to the water. There are umbrellas completely covering a 50-foot-wide section of the beach for as far as I can see in each direction. On one side of this line of umbrellas is the ocean, on the other is an equally long line of food carts from which food and drinks are brought to those relaxing on the beach.
The Thai hipster serving as our host brought us several bottles of soda and sand pails full of ice. Almost instantly a barrage of merchants selling fried shrimp, kids trinkets made out of beach trash, cheap jewelry, and other items descended upon our party. We bought some fried shrimp. The hipster came back with several kids carrying trays full of food that my cousin’s friend ordered. Fish, crab, deep-fried pork, sticky rice, som tum (a delicious spicy papaya salad), octopus, and several other dishes were placed on the table that sits between the row of lounge chairs. By the time our servers finish bringing us our food, the entire table is covered with all sorts of sea food. Everyone eats quickly, taking a bit of each dish.
I chill for a few hours. I mean, I just sit in my lounge chair. I don’t do shit. I fall asleep for a bit. I reach over for another handfull of sticky rice. Finally, my cousin’s friend’s daughter, the cutest 4 year old I’ve ever seen, convinces me to go down to the ocean. I get my feet in. The water is warm. Hot even. Bathwater temperature. There is a breeze, but otherwise the stifling heat and humidity of Bangkok is still present here next to the ocean.
I talk with one of the kids my age, Tom, about his life in Thailand. He’s a chemical engineering student who works for a multinational corporation producing some sort of chemicals (this is where the language barrier becomes a problem) headquartered in Michigan. Summer vacation just started for schoolchildren and university students. Tom works 7 days a week, like most low- and middle-class Thais. He’s 24. He is learning English at his university, but he doesn’t feel that they do a good job of teaching the language. His sister (whose name I never got) is 18, a student at some university studying what he said was philosophy (though he may have said this just so that I could understand - I had already told him that I studied philosophy and very poorly explained what that entailed). She doesn’t speak English, not to me at least.
So I just chilled, for something like 6 hours, on the beach. Eating, sleeping, eating more, walking in the water, eating, etc. Not doing shit. On the car ride back to Bangkok, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep.
