Simples
I’m a man of simple pleasures. Having visited Bangkok less than twelve months ago, I chose to spend only a brief time in the Thai capital before my saunter down south. I had one full day in Bangkok and it began with breakfast.
Breakfast in most hostels in the region consists of the cheapest bread they can get, the cheapest jam they can get and, if you’re lucky, a piece of fruit. Most places do it just so they can have the blue ‘Breakfast Included’ banner spread along the top of their Booking.com entry. And it works. I, for one, always go for the breakfast-included hostels despite the insubstantial meal provided. For me, it’s strategic. I don’t think of the breakfast as breakfast but rather a snack which provides enough energy to walk from the hostel to the nearest street market to get real food. It’s first breakfast.
This time in Bangkok I stayed in Ari, a neighbourhood near the famous weekend Chatuchak markets. The hostel wasn’t the easiest location to travel to and from but it had a good breakfast. It had bread, jam and fruit. Pretty standard stuff. But the bread was sourdough, the jam was made at the onsite cafe each day and the passionfruit, slices of watermelon and big chunk of dragon fruit piled onto my plate were as fresh as could be and came with yogurt on the side. It was the best version of a standard hostel breakfast. You see, I’m a man of simple pleasures.
I left Taiwan via Kaohsiung, before completing my original plan which was to do a full loop of the country. I left for a few reasons. One was the convenience of a direct flight out of Kaohsiung. Another was the typhoon which had made each day a guessing game. Each morning started with me checking various weather apps and the Taipei Times website, trying to forecast where the weather would be best in the small island nation. This got tiring after a while. The weather did start getting better on the day before I left Taiwan. But the typhoon was a convenient excuse. Another reason for my plans changing was that the hostels in Taiwan and northern Asia were a lot quieter than other places I had been to. I like my own space but after over two months of mostly quiet, unsociable days this got tiring too. So I got on a plane to Bangkok.
Like most hostels, the one I stayed at in Bangkok had a list of rules on the back door of the dormitory door. One of the rules read: “No sex in public spaces.” Whilst this conjures the image of two (or more) dirt-covered hippies going at it in the bushes of the local park, the implication was that shared dormitories were not a place for consummating chance encounters with strangers. Others might be turned off by such signage, I took it as a good indicator. The hostel was clearly a sociable place. Nowhere I’d stayed in Taiwan had banned carnal relations in dormitories. Sure, it was a step beyond the level of socialisation I was hoping for in a two night stay, but it was a step in the right direction.
My social drought was formally broken over my jam-and-dragon-fruit breakfast on the first morning. I sat with Talesha from south-east Queensland who, in the space of a fifteen minute conversation, twice managed to casually bring up the fact that she wasn’t vaccinated against coronavirus. I noticed that her breakfast plate had been adjusted, with the gluten and dairy products not making an appearance. I didn’t press as to why she was just having fruit but her dietary requests went along nicely with the stereotype she was portraying through her stance on modern medicine and parent’s decision to name her Talesha.
Talesha and I talked with another man who I didn’t get the name of. He was from New Jersey and was a campaign director for the Democratic party. He ran campaigns in midterm elections for local candidates across the US. Being a non-election year, he had a few months off to travel. The conversation was simple and cliqued for a hostel (where are you from, how long have you been travelling, etc.) but I didn’t mind. You see, I’m a man of simple pleasures.
After breakfast I went for a long walk and eventually ended up at a boat pier on the Chao Phraya river. I wasn’t particularly concerned where I was going, I just wanted a ride of the river. As a commuter boat arrived, a man working for the transport company approached me. “Sixty baht for a ticket. You pay for ticket on the boat, sir,” he reminded me. It was a bit more expensive than I had remembered but was still incredibly cheap. I was happy to get on the boat till the last stop, get off, and then get back on the next one in the opposite direction.
After boarding I realised I had misheard the man. The boat was not sixty baht but sixteen baht, the equivalent of about eighty Australian cents. This was quite good value. It was a money-can’t-buy experience in the truest sense of the phrase - there’s nothing that you can buy with that amount of money back home. I enjoyed the boat ride and the value. With the wind blowing through my hair, I felt like a thrifty James Bond winding down the river. I went on the boat three times that day, not to go anywhere but just to be on the boat. You see, I am a man of simple pleasures.
