We are in the Thai capital, after 18 hours of travel without any problems. After a series of crises during last few days before departure, it is hard to believe how easily we came not only from Poland to Bangkok, but also from the airport to the hostel. Beside small delay during our changing flight in Berlin, everything went according to plan. Our bags arrived with everything (even attached mates were sill there, although we didn’t give them much hope taking into consideration changing planes twice), served meals were vegetarian as we wished, and finally even queues for visa were not too long. Everything calm.
Second day is also without serious crises, but calm is no longer the most appropriate word. We’ve started with a visit to Amnesty International Thailand, which also provided us with accommodation for the first two days in the capital. Local Amnesty seems to have completely different problems than Polish or Italian ones. About most of them we don’t even hear on our side of the world. Amnesty has proved to be a good source of information and what’s more the same day they organized us a meeting with Thai Lawyers for Human Rights organizations.
Between meetings, we are slowly getting used to the Thai life. We have a Thai phone card (it wasn’t easy, every SIM card has to be register, without a passport there is no chance to buy it!), we worked out the public transport system (metro, train and tram have nothing in common, for all of them you need separate tickets, which here look like gambling chips in various colors), we tried Thai food (oh, I will surely loose some weight here, after a few bites I had everything in my mouth burned, I don’t know if I can get used to that amount of hot spices …). Among other first impressions, Bangkok seems to be quite grey (concrete airport, rain and lack of sunshine even though it’s still hot), most colors you can observe in shopping malls, which are more or less everywhere (actually today I have the impression that Bangkok is one big shopping center … ), and residents are mostly college-age (we’ve seen today one child and maybe two older person). Everyone is busy with his/her phones, in the subway I’ve seen one reading person, rather not Asian. They have very long fingers. Very strong makeup or not at all (rather none). No high heels. They politely wait their turn to enter the subway (much better organized than ours!). They speak English a little, although I still have to get used to the accent. They will not let us die.
A lot could be still said even though it’s not even one day here (impossible!). But I’m done for today, here it’s already middle of the night (5h later than in Poland), and the jet lag is still working.
Greetings from rainy Bangkok!