Laugh along with the better weather...

This was it.......After months of planning, booking flights, changing flights, arranging where and when I might meet people, and after 5 going away nights out and failing an exam I flew to Heathrow. My Quantas Flight to Bangkok was due to leave the runway, on the next runway my sister was on a Thai airways airbus so I knew it was going to be a competition about who got the better in-flight movies, who got the better food or who had the most legroom (Colleen won hands down with the Free alcohol)
But this was it....it felt right, I never had much of an idea about what might make me excited or happy in life but I had a feeling in my stomach that travelling was gonna be it!!
We touched down in Bangkok on a Saturday afternoon, it was hot and humid. the architecturally designed airport was much different than the standard uninspiring UK airports and gave me My first impression of Bangkok as futuristic, stylish and clean. so when we got our pre-arranged taxi to the city centre some 40minutes away I couldn't have been more wrong. Buildings looked old and decrepit but had a certain charm, it was obvious there's a lot of change happening in the city, billboards for fast food chains and sportswear brands littered the sides of the busy highways, motorbikes whizzed past and the much anticipated tuk tuks became more apparent as we got closer to the city centre. I loved it and I couldn't wait to get out in to the heat and explore!
We arrived at our hotel, it was booked for 1 night and was right on the edge of the backpackers Mecca that is Koh San Road. It was bright, clean, full of glass and marble and was evidently more expensive than the majority of the places in the area. This suited neither my travel budget nor my hope to rough it a little but I thought I could at least have one night of comfort and see how things are.
Later that night after we had caught up on a little sleep, we headed back out in to the city, we hadn't veered too far from koh San road so decided that we would go a walk and find somewhere authentic to enjoy out first taste of authentic Thai food, I'll be honest, at this point I felt like a kid on christmas morning! We walked down a few little winding roads and after being heckled and coerced by the local people selling everything you could imagine we decided the next restaurant was the right place. The restaurant was in front of a nice hotel, with ponds full of coi carp and hundreds of tropical plants, the tables and chairs were made of fine bamboo and the lighting was low over each table. The authentic food was amazing, the beer was amazing, the staff were amazing.....and it's amazing how I didn't see the rat walk past my bare naked feet, although Colleen did and decided not to point it out until it had sauntered off! We walked back through the bustling Bangkok streets after dinner, had a few more ice cold beers from the vendors and called it a night.

Chuck Palaniuk....I have never met Chuck, but his books and his insight has helped my viewpoint on the world from this tiny island. With that my ode to Mr Palaniuk will be paraphrasing some of his greatest lines to pepper my travel writing and at least make my story seem a little more meaningful and interesting to those who might endure reading this.

"Nothing of me is original; I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known" Chuck States in invisible monsters and this is true! In 3 months in 2011 I met more remarkable people than I have my whole life, I feel like a different person, with different views and a more open attitude. It's thanks to those people that I feel this way and to each and every one of them and for each and every moment, no matter how small....I will be forever grateful. Socialisation, as University informs us, begins as a child by your immediate family, then by your friends and your local community and culture. I've been blessed with a few great friends and an amazing family but aside from that my first 27 years on this planet have been unremarkable. I've lived in a small town, in a small country, with a small mentality, sheltered from the world and closed in with our own hatred of each other. I've met few remarkable people which in turn has made me unremarkable. I lived my fantasies through other peoples travels and achievements and had no aspirations to go too far, at least if I did they were never too serious.
Strangely it was a week long trip down the east coast of Ireland that made the difference, realising that if there were so many beautiful places I hadn't visited in Ireland what must the outside world be like. I decided to spend my 3 month summer vacation from University travelling the world, alone, to at least "expand my horizons" as the old adage goes. and hey, I might even get a tan out of it!

I'm writing this long after I traveled, took the photos, explored the food, tasted the culture, made the friends and laughed about the stories....mainly because I'm lazy, but also because my travel diary was intermittent as I was having too good a time to write about having a good time....and anyway....
As Chuck Palaniuk once said “Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away.”