I debated beginning my Thailand blog with a story of getting conned. But that is how my trip began, so that is where this story starts.

It was Saturday, December 28, 2019. My first full day in Bangkok, Thailand. I would be exploring the city solo for a few days until my friend arrived on New Years Eve. I was excited, but slightly apprehensive about exploring this massive city on my own. Unlike Nepal, I didn’t know the language and knew very little about the country. When people heard I was going to Thailand, they told me to “be careful,” often referencing the infamous Red Light District and sex trafficking industry. Later I would learn that sex trafficking is roughly equivalent to shootings in the US. Under-reported when it happens to minorities, over-reported when it’s the upper class. Any incidents are too many. It’s atrocious. Yet the risk doesn’t stop us from leaving our houses each day.

However, at the time, I knew virtually nothing about Bangkok aside from what I’d heard and the small amount of Googling I’d done to prepare for my trip to Thailand. On the day I arrived, I learned to navigate the train and the metro from the airport to my hostel, Warm Window Silom, in a quiet business district. Since that’s what I knew, that’s how I started on my first full day in Bangkok. I walked to Lumphini Park and hopped the train to city center. From there I found Chao Phraya, the major river that drains the Northern highlands, runs past Bangkok, and empties into the Gulf of Thailand. I figured if I stayed along the river, I could explore without getting terribly lost.

As I walked, I observed my new surroundings. Shop owners sold clothing, jewelry, and cheap plastic products in bins. The smell of fried chicken and pork wafted from restaurants preparing classic dishes with names like tom yum goon, laap, phat kaphrao, and khao soi. Later on these names will become familiar, but right now there are meaningless, mixing with all the other unknown languages being exchanged around me. And then there was the street food. All sorts of fruit eaten with wooden skewers, unidentified meats of being cooked over coals, thin crepes called roti often filled with banana drizzled with syrup (a tourist favorite)… all for less than $2.

I grabbed a couple sliced mangoes from a fruit stand and left the river veering towards the tourist district. Specifically, Khao San Road. Khao San is known by tourists and Thai alike for being a raucous party district for backpackers traveling Asia. I was planning to steer clear of Khao San after sundown, but wanted to say I’d been there and earn my Thai tourist badge.

I was a few blocks from Khao San when I was stopped by a small middle aged Thai woman. She told me she was practicing her English. We chatted about upcoming holiday and she taught me the phrase Sawadee Pee Mai, Happy New Year! She asked where I was going. I told her towards Khao San Road and possibly the Chatuchak Weekend Market. She asked if I was new to Thailand. I was. She asked if I was traveling alone. I was. This should have been a red flag for a scam, but the woman seemed so innocent that the thought didn’t even cross my mind. That is, until she gave me a paper with a written price for a long tail boat tour and hailed a tuk tuk to take me to the “Thai dock” where I would find a dozen white tourists like myself about to embark on a $70 boat ride. This was a hustle. She was good. I was an idiot.

I was ushered to the back of a colorful long tail boat where I would sit brooding for the first 20 minutes of the boat ride. After I got over myself, I began to look around and take in the scenery. I payed way too much for this boat ride to not enjoy it! I wasn’t really sure where we were going, but I overheard the other tourists talking about a floating market down one of the channels and looping back past Wat Arun temple. It sounded sort of fun, I guess. So I settled in for the first of many unexpected adventures.

We quickly left the busy Chao Phraya River with it’s barges and cruise boats and entered the quiet channels lined with ramshackle houses on stilts, tropical gardens, and small temples with classic Thai architecture. After about half an hour the boat pulled up to a dock and dropped us off. The driver told us 30 minutes and set us loose. We were at Taling Chan, part floating market, part street market.

I wandered around the street market looking at all the interesting foods. One thing I didn’t anticipate was how much meat & fish was in the Thai diet. Back home I’m vegetarian, however when I travel, I make exceptions. For this trip, I’ll have to be more of a pescatarian. Eating more shrimp and tilapia is sacrifice I’m willing to take.

I picked up a little bowl of pineapple sticky rice and sampled a fried pastry from one of the street stands. I then ventured into the floating market section for my first pad thai, complete with prawns, tofu, and spices that made my mouth water. All for $1.50. I could get used to this.

Soon our 30 minutes were up. I hurried back to the dock so as not to miss my expensive boat ride back to Bangkok. We spent nearly an hour working our way through the canals, passing more houses on stilts, temples, and other colorful long tail boats filled with wide-eyed tourists like myself. I wondered how many of them intended to take a boat tour today.

We emerged back onto the main river by Wat Arun, arguably the most iconic Buddhist temples in Thailand. We crossed the river back to the Bangkok side and stopped at various docks to unload passengers. We did not stop at the “Thai dock” that I’d been thrown on at, so I just hopped off at the last dock. I couldn’t help but laugh at the events of the past few hours: tricked into a tuk tuk ride to a tourist dock where I was taken by boat through a maze of channels and eventually dropped off again at a random dock. Worth the $70 for the 3 hours of boat travel? Definitely not in Thailand. Worth a good story? Absolutely.