Commentary on hookahs, smoke rings, and The Dream

This Open Road series is a recounting of Mike’s trek through South East Asia. Read on as Love, Sabotage, and Intrigue pave his road to a discovery of what human potential really is.

It’s 4:58pm and I’m in an empty food shop, entertaining a pack of flies. 

The 10 minute wait climaxed with a very nice Thai lady opening the doors and instructing me to go find food.

Are all these orders normal, or do I just look like a big pussy? I wonder.

The cook interrupts my wandering thoughts with a Pepsi, failing to acknowledge my Coke order. I do the same.

The Pad Thai looks unlike any other Pad Thai I’ve eaten (and I WAS just here a month ago), but approval morphing into Fandom takes only as long as the 1st bite.

Buses nonchalantly roll by and I ponder the English Drag Queen’s fate…

She’d found me just as I’d lost her to ethnic confusion. Spanish-Turkish hybrid? Ah, of course, British; they always are. I got nothing against the Brits; it’s just that they tend to be edgier than us Americans. And edgy she is.

Anyone over 35 dragging a suitcase alone in a 3rd world country is surely British, in my experience. I shouldn’t be surprised anymore.

Her accent was neither comforting nor agitating as she replayed her perilous tale of requesting the bus station but receiving a travel agency as the driver’s choiced destination. The F-bomb is dropped at least once, quietly, aggressively, and not by me.

I forget that I’ve only just arrived and tell her Yes, I’m pretty sure you just take a left down there and within a block or two should see a bus station.

To the right? Not sure, but I know I saw a bus to the left.

She pulls her suitcase left.

Within 10 minutes, three buses come from the right. 

The Pepsi is delicious. The man is nice. What happens next is totally unexpected…