Sabai Sabai
My first trip to Thailand was in 2006, and it lasted 3 months. My second trip, in 2013-2014, lasted one year. Then it took me 10 years to get around to the third trip, and it was only two weeks. Let me tell you something, that felt weird.
On the first trip, I knew nothing about Thailand. I just went there because my friend had been there and he said it was cool. I knew nothing about the culture, nothing about the history, nothing about the food (I honestly don’t know if I’d ever eaten Thai food before). All I knew was that it was cheap to travel, sleep, and eat there, and that it was a good hub for travel into other places in the region. But, on that first trip I learned a great deal about the place, and I met the love of my life, who became my wife.
By the second trip, I considered myself an expert. After all, I’d lived there before, I knew some words, and I’d been talking to people about the place for 7 years! This could not have been farther from the truth. I was much less the expert than I thought I was. I learned a lot in that year of living there, about Thailand, about myself, and about being a foreigner in Thailand. By the end of the year, I knew I was no expert on Thailand, but I was a seasoned veteran.
This third trip was honestly far too long in the making, and far too short a trip. I do not know why we’ve waited this long to come back, but the trip was much overdue. I wanted more than two weeks (the rest of my family did a full month), but I have a lot going on back home with work, and couldn’t justify the time away or the expense. There were so many things I wanted to do on this trip that I knew from the onset of planning there was no way I was going to get them all done. So, what then? What mindset was I to take with me on this journey? Take it easy. Do what you can, but no more, and be cool with that. The Thais call this “Sabai Sabai”.
Family There Before Me
Chelly, her Mother, and the boys where there a few days before me. It was strange. I mean, we planned it this way, but it was still weird being all the way back in Sedro-Woolley and receiving photos from the rest of them in Thailand without me. The primary reason for the trip was to see Chelly’s sister Mandy. Mandy had been living there for 17 years, and aside from that year we lived over there in 2013-14, we hadn’t seen much of her. Even that was a decade ago. We’d seen her more recently in Kenya, but Javan was quite young and Nathan just a baby. They knew their aunt mostly from WhatsApp video calls.
There was also the issue of Thailand’s importance to our story, the place it holds in my heart and Chelly’s, the little bits of Thai language we use around the house, and the Thai recipes that show up in our kitchen. For Javan, Thailand was an experience he’d had at ages 2 and 3, something he knew mostly from photos and stories that were told, but not a real living memory that he could call up in his mind’s eye. And for Nathan, it was just stories. He had no context for understanding the place. So, we had to bring the boys there. Mandy is planning to move to Australia soon, and she won’t be in Bangkok much longer. We needed to get these boys over there while the time was ripe.
So, they planned a trip for a full month in Thailand, taking the boys out of school, and going to stay with Mandy in her apartment. But, at the time Chelly bought the tickets, I didn’t know if I’d be able to go. There was a lot going on with my businesses that was up in the air. When I did eventually buy my tickets, I knew there’d be no room for me in Mandy’s apartment, so I’d have to be somewhat on ‘my own trip’ anyway. At first, I considered taking a double trip to Thailand and Greece (the tickets from Thailand to Greece are just so cheap, you see?). But, eventually I settled on just two weeks in Thailand in the middle of the family’s larger trip. I would kind of do my own thing, joining or separating from the group when it suited, facilitating family side-trips, and taking the boys off the ladies’ hands when they needed a break.
Khaosan Road
The top place on my list to visit was Khaosan Road. I don’t know why, but this place has always been my favorite place in Thailand, and one of my favorite places in the world. It’s grungy and loud and over-touristed, the prices are ridiculous–and it gets very sketchy at night–but it has a certain charm. It was not the first place that I went when I visited Thailand, but it was the first place that I really enjoyed being. It tickled all my senses, especially my sense of adventure. This is the place where I made some friends, who advised me to buy a battered copy of the Lonely Planet guidebook (the used bookstore is still there), and this became the launching-off point for excursions into the far country (and other countries). This is also the place where I met my wife.
Later, when we were living in Thailand for the year, this was the place that we made our home base. It was the first place we came when we arrived, the place we went on weekend getaways into Bangkok, and the place we stopped to rest when transitioning between other parts of the country.
Nostalgia
As much as things have changed in Thailand, and as much as I have changed–as much as my life has changed–I couldn’t help but be overcome by nostalgia. I simply had to track down the old places and see what they were like now.
After meeting Chelly and her sister Mandy for dinner in Sukhumvit, I took a motorbike to Khaosan Road and booked a room at “At Home”, the same guest house Chelly was staying in on the night we met, and the place we used as our home base when Javan was a little one. The charm was gone. It’s not nearly as nice, or as lively, as it used to be. I dropped my bags off, had a shower, and returned to Sukhumvit to party all night with Chelly and Mandy.
Later that night, I also had to track down all the places I remembered fondly from my first trip. Some of these were on Khaosan, or the nearby Soi Rambuttri, and surrounding alleyways and side streets. There was the guesthouse I first stayed in (“New My House”), and the first bar I went out to for drinks when Claudia, the Swiss girl, had her going-away party. There was the place we all sat up talking late at night after the bars closed. And there was the alleyway where I ate Tom Yum Koong with the locals and played Thai Checkers. Sadly, the Muay Thai gym, Sor Vorapin, was gone, paved over and replaced by a new building. But, I did find one of my old Muay Thai trainers cooking in an alleyway restaurant nearby.
I walked up and down the street in the early morning daylight, looking for the old Immortal Bar, the place I’d left my friends on the night me and Chelly met. I think I found it and now it’s a completely different type of club called “The Back” (it’s either that place or “The Club” nearby). Then I found the place I’d gone next, where the soldier and policeman had laid their rifles on the bar counter. It’s been completely remodeled. And then I located the part of the street where Chelly and I had walked past each other, made eye contact, and began to talk. It’s basically the same, but now occupied by vendors and bars who block the sidewalks so you can’t really walk by there like that anymore and meet somebody special.
When I met this gorgeous Kenyan tiger tamer on the streets of Bangkok, we were instantly inseparable from one another. But something happened the next day with her roommate’s ATM card and they were forced to return home to the tiger zoo earlier than planned. That’s when we parted, with a promise to reunite in a few days, but it just didn’t sit right with me. I ran to New My House looking for my roommate and my backpack. Scaling the outside of the building next door, I found the Frenchman, Manu, fast asleep with my backpack there beside him. I banged on the window and got the bag, then lugged that 70lb+ monster down the outside of the building and ran up the road with it looking for Chelly. I told that story in this blog back in 2006. Of course, I had to find that place too and take a picture of it for you.
It was a whirlwind of emotions, but all this nostalgia and recollection stirred something strong and joyful within me. The world is still interesting and exciting and fun. There are still new experiences waiting for me. I can still have adventures, and this was just the start of my next one.
Nic Nakis 