Finally… the time has come.

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The night before I left I finally felt a new sense of anxiety. I still felt the usual pangs of doubt and fear of poor preparation, but the anxiety had transformed instead into a strong urge of finally wanting to go and that impatience of waiting that precedes the trip.

After more than a year and a half, I was packed and ready to leave for my trip to Thailand.

I slept light that night. One of those sleeps where you’re in and out of consciousness, where dreams blend with thoughts and you’re not really sure which is which. Eyes flutter and you lose sense of time. Excitement and adrenaline flourished where sleep should have.

That lasted three hours before my alarm went off. At 4:15 a.m. I got up and noticed my father had already been awake, presumably to make sure my alarm clock did indeed go off.

After some last minute double checking, I got my pack together, hugged and kissed my mom and left with my dad for the airport. Saying goodbye to my father was really difficult. Over the month that I’d been home we’ve shared some truly awesome experiences and adventures together and saying goodbye then was like saying goodbye to a best friend.

I couldn’t begin to tell you how lucky I was to end up with an exit row seat from Orlando to Atlanta (a two-hour flight) and from Atlanta to Seoul, South Korea (a 15-hour flight).

I’ve never flown better than I did on Korean Air. The seats were roomier, we all got whole Korean meals, any drinks we wanted and a great little entertainment system for watching movies and all that, like the good ‘ole days of American air travel.

It really became glaringly obvious how much standard American airlines blow compared to their foreign counterparts.

The meals were fantastic too: a traditional Korean bibimbop with crumbled pork, shitake mushrooms, bok choi, some other goodies and rice, which is served separate. Our second meal was a pretty standard chicken and rice dish with some crazy vegetable that was really hard and looked kind of like a thick bone… Third was a small but tasty fish and rice dish with a mix of lightly pickled veggies, all tossed in a sort-of fish/oyster sauce. Simple and characteristic of “airplane” food, but still tasty.

I wasn’t as lucky with an exit row from SK to Bangkok, but I had my row all to myself and was able to lift up the other arm rests so I could stretch out and nap.

As we approached, the view out of the airplane window of this most foreign of countries looked not unlike the view of any American city I’ve seen at night, but I knew similarities would end the moment we touched down.

The airport in Bangkok is beautiful and ultra modern, and extremely convenient for foreign travelers and was, by far, the nicest airport I’ve been in so far.

I exchanged about $290 USD for just under 10,000 Baht (pronounced BOT), and to give you some reference, a pretty delicious standard meal runs about 40 baht, or just more than a US dollar.

Going through immigration was a little tense for me, but only because I was worried there’d be some bureaucratic SNAFU with paperwork or something that I didn’t bring or whatever, but it went relatively smoothly and I passed the time in line talking to some girls from Canada and England, who were about to begin a backpacker trip around Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

After a brief wait in line for a taxi I was on my way to Kao San Road, supposedly the city’s most notorious and infamous packpacker destination and a popular jumping-off point for many foreigners.

The ride in was somewhat pleasant. We had the vast eight-lane-wide highway mostly to ourselves as it was after midnight. The taxi driver was a nice enough guy – pretty young and energetic for his shift, and he tried his best to make conversation but we couldn’t understand a word either was saying, which I just chalked up as the first of countless such experiences I was bound to have on this trip.

I began to notice that Bangkok isn’t necessarily a full-on metropolitan city with booming skyscrapers, but more a densely packed sprawling place, where city planning and consistent building codes haven’t made their way in. However, that invariably lends a place a hard and strewn-together charm, character and an informal historical record of buildings built upon buildings, powerlines strung across obsolete lines that haven’t been taken down in decades, streets winding through shanty towns and business districts alike as creeks wind through a marsh – seemingly with little forethought and reactive to spontaneous need.

The Thais are the craziest drivers I’ve ever seen. They put more focus and concentration into their route than I’ve ever seen from an American counterpart, including myself, but they seemingly obey no traffic laws. It’s every man for himself and lane lines mean nothing, traffic lights mean nothing but they’re more careful in their wild pursuits. By far, the most popular vehicle in Thailand is the motorbike, or scooter, and they swarm just about any street in the country, sometimes with as many as four passengers on one bike. There are no child safety seats on motorbikes, so parents just hold them in their laps as they speed around cars and buses and through bustling markets. I got a sense that it’s sink or swim when learning to operate any vehicle here, and while one might think there’s a steep learning curve, I don’t think there is, because it seems driving, or operating a motorbike, is a skill taught since day one, as children aren’t relegated to the comfort and isolation of an air conditioned car seat. They’re front and center day one, experiencing the madness and learning the nuances of Thai driving before they know their own alphabet… It’s admirable in a way.

Now off the interstate, we began to pick our way through the various districts of Bangkok, most notably through Chinatown and a sprawling flower market which was still in a frenzy of activity despite the hour.

We wound our way through several blocks, around countless roundabouts, crossing into oncoming traffic more times than I care to remember on our way to this Kao San Road, supposedly the seedy Mecca for the western backpacker.

And there it was… bustling with so much activity the entire road had been closed off to motor vehicle traffic, and nearly a hundred taxis were lined up along the perpendicular side streets. My taxi driver couldn’t take me any further, so we got out, I hoisted my backpack on my shoulders, paid him 450 baht and struck out onto Kao San Road…

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Tags: airline, Atlanta, backpack, backpacker, baht, Bangkok, bibimbop, Kao San Road, Korean Air, Orlando, Seoul, South Korea, taxi, travel