THE LEGEND OF BANGKOK – CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1. ROUGH LANDING

The flight to Bangkok was excruciatingly long. 13 hours in total with a stopover at Muscat airport in Oman. I must say however that Oman Air is a pretty sweet airline to fly by. I was a bit worried at first when we got on the plane and the pilot started praying in Arabic but if you must be stranded helpless above the clouds for 13hrs, you can’t go too wrong with them. The food was good and plentiful, the movie selection was pretty awesome, the air hostesses were hot (in their own Arabic way), not to mention that I was never once worried about terrorists hijacking/blowing up the plane. I mean, why would they? It was filled with Arabs like them, very few Americans to kill. I would imagine that if a terrorist suggested it at their annual terrorist convention (I assume they have one) he would be boo-ed off stage and pelted with rotten fruit. (Plus, I was rocking a pretty sweet beard, I could blend in and pretend to be one of them if I had to 😀 )

A view from the top-Pictured; pretty, fluffy clouds

When the final announcement came that we were over the skies of Bangkok, I smiled. I had been reading ‘The girl who played with fire’, watching movies, sleeping, eating, tickling my friends and going to toilet for the past 13hrs, I couldn’t wait to get off. Once off the plane, we all went to border clearing where once again, I was reminded of my misfortune to have a Nigerian passport. The dude at the clearance said those of us with Nigerian (and most other African) passports needed a Yellow fever clearance certificate.

I was like... O_o? Do I look like I have Yellow fever?

Yellow fever? Oh yeah? Dude, Really?!  I’ve lived most of my life in Nigeria and I don’t even know anyone that has ever had yellow fever so I was a bit miffed about being accused of being a potential Yellow fever vector. To make matters worse, the guy in charge was as ugly as sin and barely spoke English. After a frustrating 20mins during which I had to say “we flew in from LONDON, not Nigeria” over 30 times, he finally asked us to pay 10 baht before he stamped our passports. Ah! There it was. He wanted a bribe of some sort. His soul was as ugly as his face. Waffi no dey carry last, highest we go play draw- We refused, and another 10mins of frustration followed until, at long last, the guy gave up, stamped the passports and let us go.

We, the unfortunate ones Nigerians, then rejoined the group and headed to the coach that would take us to the hotel. As I stepped outside the airport, the heat took me aback. I was all like “whoa, whoa, whoa, wetin be this? what is up with this hot weather? I mean, Nigeria is hot but this is just ridiculous!” My friend “Hidy” informed me that this is how Thailand is usually and assured me that I would get used to it. I would later find out the scientific reasons why it was so hot. I accepted his assertion, got on the bus and promptly fell asleep.

When I awoke, the bus had stopped and I could have sworn I was on Lagos Island! It looked just like Lagos. Throughout the trip, I would never get over how much many of the urban parts of Bangkok look just like Lagos.

Yeah, that was the same thing I said too, bro

Our hotel was located in a part of Thailand called Ratchadapisek and the hotel was called Ratchada resort and spa, which I believe was some kind of inside joke. Hotel? Yes it was and it was a pretty ok hotel. But resort and spa? TROLOLOLOL!!! Nah. No way. Someone was stretching their imagination when they named the place that.  Anyway, it was what we had booked so we moved in.  (I have been told that in ‘the hangover part 2’ they ended up in Ratchada police station. This was within walking distance of our hotel and I saw the place a few times. Okay, yes I know #ThisIsNotWhyWeAreHere, moving on…)

Me and Ms.O, famzing with a much better hotel...

The first thing I did was change into shorts and slippers. The heat! And then I and a small group of friends took a walk through Rachadapisek (henceforth referred to as THE ZANGA). That place was a slum mehn! Just like some parts of Lagos, smelly, dirty, with diseased dogs walking down the road, people selling food along the street, music blaring, you know, all the beautiful ugliness of a modern urban slum. But despite all that, it was still friendly and had a fun vibe; there were young girls walking around at 12 midnight, people smiling, it was peaceful and safe. This was a recurring theme throughout the trip. On a side note, I remember that immediately we walked out of the hotel, a man appeared and showed us pictures of naked girls asking if we wanted to come to a “show”. Obviously, we knew what this was and we did our best to ignore him.

After the walk, we joined the rest of our class for dinner at some buka along the road for local Thai food. The food was pretty nice, cheap and full of flavor. I hadn’t eaten such tasty, cheap food since I left Nigeria. I could tell I was going to like this place already. It possessed all the roughness, cheapness and hustling nature of Lagos combined with the structure, safety and organization of London. A true urban jungle.

The only reason this picture of the buka is here is because the one with me in it is too ugly.

Throughout this trip I ate a total of 7 times at “Mama Ratchada” buka. One of my friends “Lil D” kept trying to pick-up one of the girls that worked there even though she spoke barely two words of English. Safe to say his standards were (and still are) pretty low. To my knowledge he never did succeed, but that is neither here nor there. Anyway, after the meal, we were very tired and suffering from jet-lag. Personally, I felt burnt out and burned by the Thai heat. I retired to my room, connected to the internet via the hotel wireless and tweeted the folllowing…. “First tweet from Thailand :D”

The fun was just about to begin.

To be continued

Coming next…CHAPTER 2: THE BURN

THE LEGEND OF BANGKOK – Prologue

Hello people. So I finally made the move to WordPress. It pained me greatly to abandon blogger – my first blogging platform, but hey, that’s what happens to the first wife when she stops taking care of herself,; gets all fat and ugly; stops wearing heels and starts wearing rubber shoes; doesn’t make her hair, you know, all that fancy stuff; and the husbands friends start complaining and at first he defends her but after a while, he can’t anymore and he has to out every day and see his friends with their pretty, young thangs and he knows he can get one but he still feels loyalty to his first and he resists and tries and then one day when the cup is full and overflowing and he can hold it no longer, he kicks the stup cow out of…er…I’m sorry I got carried away a bit. Anyway, now I’m on WordPress. Learning to love it now. That’s that.

It happened. Deal with it.

It’s been a while since I posted anything. I apologize; it was due to writers block (Sometimes I feel like taking a concrete block and etching the word “writer” onto it just so I can say I have ‘a writers block’). Anyway, I couldn’t find the voice to say what I wanted to say so I opted to remain silent. It took the occurrence of a long anticipated event, currently happening on a global scale to rouse me from my writing slumber, an event which many of you will pay to witness, which will make some cry, laugh, wail in disappointment and some in triumph: the event of which I speak is none other than: The theatrical release of the ‘Hangover Part 2’!

😀

 Yes, apparently the boys who provided us with many a laugh due to their alcohol-fueled madcap adventures in Vegas are back and as the tagline of the movie tells us “Bangkok has them now”. Without getting into any lengthy discussion about whether this one is as funny as the first or if it has fallen victim to the dreaded ‘Sequel curse’, I’ll say I think it’s pretty awesome that they chose Bangkok as a location for the sequel. As some of you may already know I was in Bangkok myself for a few days on an official class trip which was little better than a thinly veiled excuse for much needed faaji after 7 months of constant and consistent torture by our lecturers. Seeing the trailer for the movie reminded of my few days and nights in Bangkok and seeing as how my brain is as effective at holding memories as a basket is at containing smoke, I decided to write a tale of my own adventures in Bangkok before I forget all the juicy details. That being said, this is my version of The Legend of Bangkok: A tale of smiles, sun, temples, gold and ladyboys.

 PROLOGUE

~The story you are about to read is true. Places and events are reported more or less as they are and as they occurred (supplemented with hyperbole, silliness, illustrations and sarcasm as deemed required) The names of some of the players have been withheld to avoid beating of , legal proceedings against and/or murder of the writer by offended people~

(However, there will be pictures, so…errr….yeah….they’ll still kick the shit out of me and its kind of futile really…so yeah)

Our flight to Bangkok was scheduled for 10:00pm the day after my final exams. I decided to leave all my packing and arrangements till the last minute and then just to make my life more interesting, I woke up late – at 10:30am. (You know, as per badt guys and big boiz tigns  (-_______________- ).

Realizing how close I was cutting it, I foolishly decided to leave the house without taking a bath. (This stupidity came back to bite me in the ass later on).

First order of business, I went to get me a haircut. It was pretty sweet if I may say so myself and I promptly christened the style “Bangkok Dangerous”. (If you like be there making fun of me, I don’t care. And also… Askor!)After that, I ran all my errands successfully, changed my few British pounds into Thai Baht, and was on my way back home when I saw a sign that quite simply spoke to both the Waffi and the Ijebu in my soul: SALE! I could not resist…I walked in.

By the time I walked out of the store with a pair of sweet shoes bought at a ridiculously low price, it was 4:00pm. I was in a hurry and started to run, I still had to get home and pack. Struggling with the box of shoes I had just bought while running, sweat was now escaping my unwashed armpits and beginning to give off a foul smell. Ignoring all this, I hopped on the bus and headed home. Just because the world is a cruel and evil place and fate likes to mock me, a hot girl got on at the next stop and sat in front of me. She looked at me. She smiled. I looked at her.  I Smiled. She smelled me. I smelled myself. She turned away. I looked down at the floor and wept inside my soul with shame. When I got to my stop, I jumped off, ran home and entered the shower to try and wash the shame and the smell away.

After putting that trauma behind me, I packed, locked up my room, said a small prayer and walked to the station where I hopped on the train heading to Heathrow airport. I ran into 4 of my Kazakh classmates on the train and we shared a few half-hearted jokes. By the time we got to the airport it was almost 7:00pm, just about the right time for check-in. I had to wait for my friends “Big E” and “Ms. O” to arrive since I had their tickets with me. After this point, everything went smoothly from check-in to the start of the flight.  As the entire class boarded the flight, I thought to myself “This is real; we are really going to Bangkok baby!” (At this point, I may or may not have fist-bumped the air-hostess).

To be continued

Coming next…Chapter 1: ROUGH LANDING