Author
To my own real-life hero: Trav
I’ve arrived in Bangkok feeling jettisoned and adrift, exhausted, jetlagged, and asking myself – what the hell am I doing here all on my own? In the long line for customs, I stand with everyone else who was on my flight from London. My eyes are fixed on those around me who look so happy and purposeful, so clearly excited to be in the most popular city in the world, while I’m sweltering in my jeans and long-sleeved, far-too-heavy cotton shirt. I’ve never suffered from a fear of crowds before, but now I do, and I can hardly breathe.
When it’s my turn, my passport is scanned, my fingerprints are taken, and I’m given a passing glance together with a thirty-day entry stamp into Thailand. I follow the masses pouring through luggage collection and into the arrivals hall, where behind a barrier, taxi touts push and shove and yell and uniformed chauffeurs wave and shout and people are holding up cards with stranger’s names on them. I’m overwhelmed.
Once outside the terminal, it feels like I’ve walked into a wall of incredible heat and oppressive humidity and an onslaught of noise and voices at fever pitch. Tuk-tuk and taxi drivers beep their horns and jostle aggressively for position at the kerbside. The racket is deafening and the fumes are nauseating. Chatter fills my head – thousands of voices in so many different languages. Odours in the air assault my nose – the unwashed and the over-perfumed smells are so strong that I can taste them on my tongue. Everyone seems so preoccupied with pushing suitcases and gathering children and moving on quickly to wherever they are going that they knock into me without apology or care, as if I’m invisible.
I look around at beggars in rags on pavements with their arms outstretched to well-dressed tourists. I see beautiful and very young Thai girls with long black silky hair and tight dresses, laughing and hanging onto the arms of far older, overweight Western men.
Why couldn’t I have run away to somewhere quieter, less smelly, much less scary?
‘Lady! Lady! Taxi! Taxi!’
I allow myself to be led to a taxi by an enthusiastic and smiling Thai man and I give him the address of a hotel. I have no idea where it is, or how far, but I’m suddenly too tearful and weary to care. As it is, the smiling taxi driver is a gentleman. He whisks me through the hustle and bustle of the city with the speed and dexterity of a knight in shining armour and delivers me to the safety of my hotel. I drag myself across the sticky vinyl car seat into the hot and humid space that now exists between me and the revolving polished glass doors of the hotel’s lobby.
A uniformed doorman immediately rushes to my assistance. I see him hesitate, looking for luggage before realising there is none, then with a smile he ushers me inside. I look round at the opulence – the polished marble, the shiny surfaces, the huge crystal chandeliers, the sparkly water features – which under any other circumstances would have thrilled and impressed me but right now just add to the surreality of my situation.
I walk over to reception feeling completely out of sorts. A very tall, slim, pretty receptionist wearing a body-hugging, green silk dress smiles at me.
I try to smile back, but my lips have so long been set to stoic they don’t want to obey me.
‘Sawatdee ka,’ she says, bowing her head graciously.
I repeat the salutation, noting from her name badge that she is called Lola.
‘Welcome to Bangkok, madam. Are you checking in?’
I can’t help but admire Lola’s curiously strong angular features and her beautiful waist-length long black hair. She is tall and broad-shouldered.
I feel my face softening. ‘Yes please. My name is Lorraine Anderson.’
‘Ah, yes. I see you have booked one of our Executive Suites, Miss Anderson.’
I would normally have insisted on being addressed as Mrs Anderson, but I didn’t bother this time.
I just nod, feeling embarrassed at how red-faced and dishevelled I must look, a fact confirmed to me when I catch sight of myself in a mirrored column.
But why should I even care when nobody knows me here?
And sod the expense of the Executive Suite. It might have been the only room available to me at the time I booked, but right now it’s exactly what I need. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a damn sight easier for me to cry myself to sleep in a luxury hotel suite than in a crowded backpacker hostel.
‘Just the one night, madam?’
‘Yes.’ I hand over my credit card and then have a bit of a panic.
I mean, what the hell happens tomorrow?
While fighting tears at check-in at Gatwick, all I’d managed to think about was the here and now. But what happens next? Where I will go? What I will do?
I have absolutely no idea. My life has been turned upside down and I’m in freefall.
It’s as if Lola can read my mind. ‘I can offer you a complimentary late checkout?’
‘Yes, please,’ I stammer gratefully.
And Lola’s lovely long nails tap tap tap on her computer keyboard.
I start shaking and my teeth begin chattering in the chill of the air-conditioned lobby.
She passes me a key card. ‘Enjoy your stay Miss Anderson. Your room is on the fifteenth floor. Suite 1507. Do you need any help with your bags?’
The suite is as decadent as I’d hoped. It has a womb-like ambiance and sumptuous carpets and soft lighting across several interconnecting rooms, all with luxurious furniture and fittings. The bathroom is a dream in marble and glass, with soft white fluffy towels, and there is a vast selection of very nice toiletries. I score a bottle of wine from the not-so-mini mini-bar and take it and a goblet-sized wine glass into the bathroom with me while I take a long soak in a deep bubble bath. In the warm water I lie back and close my eyes, feeling safe at last.
A while later, feeling cleaner and calmer and cosseted in a white fluffy robe, I stand at the bedroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the bright twinkling lights of the busy city below me. I take a long gulp of my wine and then a long and steady deep breath.
On slowly breathing out, I let the feeling of surrealism and distance soothe me.
I tell myself that everything is going to be okay. Here I am, in a city of my dreams, in a country that has always been number
