I rode bus 23 once as a child.  I seem to remember it picking me up at the corner of the street I lived on and carrying me to school.  To Miss Smith's class, if I place the time period correctly.  I was a child, totally unsure of where I was going, totally unsure of the bus I was on...I asked the driver, a kind hearted by hard faced woman, if it was the bus that took me to my elementary school...every morning.  Every morning I would double check to ensure I was bound for the correct port of call.

Those feelings, so long forgotten in the mists of old memories, returned in part today on my voyage to Bangkok as I sit on Bus 23, recently departed from the Ekkmai bus station.  As a child, you must ask directions and rely on the goodwill of strangers and family to ensure you get where you need to go.  When you are too young to read, you depend on others pointing you in the right direction.  Today, bumbling around Bangkok, I felt more completely lost than I have in a LONG time.  I felt like the child, lost in a world bigger than me, and that I cannot understand.  I am not the type of person who is often found completely without a clue...but that was me today.  It wasn't a bad thing, just a foreign one.  We as human beings generally keep ourselves in one very small region that we can grasp easily and could all benefit from a little expansion of range..  

Anyways, today I went to Bangkok with a twofold mission: 1.) Help a friend get to the airport, carry bags as necessary, etc. and 2.) Talk to China Airlines about the ticket I had been forced to purchase to Vientiane before I got my boarding pass at LAX.  Since my wonderful friend was kind enough to allow me to tag along in her cab she purchased for the trip, I went on her time schedule compounded by a phenomenon called by the Thai people “Thai Time”.  My friend, Autumn, was supposed to leave in the cab at 11:00...it didn't show up until 11:40...which put us at the airport somewhere in the vicinity of 1:30.  We got separated when I went to go talk to China Airlines, which said I needed to go to their downtown office to sort out the issue.  Wanted to get things done, I went outside and hopped in another cab for a trip to the city center.  I arrived there after spending almost two hours in traffic in the cab.

I arrived at the Siam Paragon, which Google said was very near where I needed to go.  Turns out, Google knows exactly jack-shit about downtown Bangkok.  After much walking and asking questions, I was finally able to get someone to write the address in Thai so I could go and catch a tuk-tuk to take me to the place.  Google said the distance walking was under 1km...it took us almost 20 minutes to get there driving.  I arrived at 5:20, only to discover that they closed at 5:00...so that mission was a failure.  

There was then the adventure of taking the train to the Ekkmai station, which has a bus stop nearby.  The problem with little diagrams and the like is that they really don't show scale, and are often terrible at showing directions.  Thus far my approach in Thailand for navigation is to walk in an every widening circle around a point I know to be near my intended destination until I stumble upon it by accident.  This does not always work out so well....and tonight...well...lets put it this way.  I walked down every single street BUT the one with the bus terminal, up until just before the bus left.  I bought a round trip ticket back to Ban Phe, and will be back in Bangkok tomorrow to sort this business with the airline out.  As it is, I am pretty tired, I missed eating all day except for some tea and a croissant this morning, and I am looking forward to a plate of pad sie gai and a large Leo beer upon return to the Bedrock Guesthouse and Grill...I think I need to fix Aum's computer too... no rest for the people who are stupid enough to let someone know they have a useful skill.  :P