Lavaboarding

We arrived in Bangkok on Sunday morning at 3 am.  We had left L.A. Friday afternoon and somewhere in the 12 hours time difference and 15+ flight time we apparently lost Saturday.   I didn’t know whether I was tired or not, whether I should feel tired or not.  We followed the crowd of passengers through the vast corridors of the strangely quiet airport.  Immigration took forever, we always get the slow line.  Now, backpacks in hand, the hard part, figuring out how to get the hotel began.  Outside the departure doors was a line of taxis and you have to buy an official taxi ticket that you hand to the taxi driver and he will get you to your destination at a fixed rate.  Unless of course the taxi driver slows down 3 minutes into the drive and wants a higher price.  I kept insisting that we were told it is 400 Baht, not 500.  After a few back and forth he seemed to agree and off we went through the nightly Bangkok.  It was raining, I couldn’t tell what kind of city was awaiting us but as usual, my anxiety crept in and I had a hard time breathing.  It didn’t help that the taxi driver took interesting routes, back alleys full of prostitutes (I first thought that these were people leaving a club, I am an idiot for sure), one way streets, just the wrong way.  It also didn’t help that I couldn’t tell whether the official traffic was supposed to be on the right or on the left side.  His steering wheel was on the left.  Then he couldn’t find the hotel.  Up and down dark narrow alleys and side streets, still raining.  Finally after a call to the hotel he found it.  My throat always closes up when I see the horrid outside conditions, dirty cement walls, laundry hanging from windows, trash on the streets, dimly lit entry ways.  Then it becomes a gamble whether the inside will look nice and clean, or just more like the outside.  I have learned now that internet pictures of hotels lie.  Then again, who wants to leave a place at 4 am and look for something else.  But, the hotel turns out to be very nice and clean.  It’s 4:45 am, I think, when we finally plopp our bags down and fall in our soft white beds, smelly socks and all and go to the sleep.After having managed the first hurdle of arriving at a place, the next hurdle is to leave the hotel.  I don’t know how other travellers do it, I get nauseous thinking that I have more than 3 maps (metro, city, tourist, guidebook etc.) and I am still clueless of where I am in this city and how to get anywhere.  The anxiety of not knowing and the clear possibility of being swallowed is not helping.  I should be drinking.  We venture out and we find the metro and the skytrain.  Both the best ways to get around Bangkok which is famous for its horrendous traffic.The heat is pretty intense, even at 9 am, the humidity is strange and intensifies the the smells you get bombarded with from the tons of food stalls, exhaust pipers, waterways, sewer canals and life happening apparently on the street.