That time I got mugged in bangkok | a post with no pictures because they stole my iphone

Welcome to the first post from South East Asia, one with no pictures. There are no pictures thanks to the two Thai guys on scooters who snatched my bag in Bangkok which had my Iphone inside it - also, some money, all my cards and my waterproof mascara wtf. 




These things set a tone for your trip and its really hard to change that tone. You want to snap out of it, stop feeling sorry for yourself and make the most of your trip but the fact is that is isn’t that easy. Aside from the fact that getting mugged makes you feel violated, walking around the streets Bangkok without a cellphone makes you feel really disconnected and alone. As pathetic as it sounds, having social media at hand to connect you to your friends and family at home makes the culture shock easier to deal with - and in Bangkok, the culture shock is real.  




The things I’ve seen in Bangkok range from the people sleeping on the street, the “houses” along the Bangkok river where you just can’t believe people actually live; to the man on Khao San road with amputated legs who gets a little more sympathy (and money) from tourists and the people trying to sell me hammocks outside bars at midnight like, what am I meant to do with a hammock right now?  




Bangkok makes you feel a thousand things all at the same time.  Like sick to your stomach, from the smell of some of the street food (the boiling fish heads for instance), fed up with the tuktuk drivers trying to rip you off and the people trying to talk you into buying tailor made suits at 8pm when you actually just looking for some fries. It makes you feel scared that you’ll have your passport stolen from you and you’ll be stuck Thailand forever, probably having to work on the street selling tickets to the “ping-pong pussy show” (why does this exist?)




For the most part though, it makes you feel guilty that you even feel all these things.  You feel guilty that these things come as such an unpleasant shock to you because you realise what that means. You live such a privileged and sheltered life and you think you understand what poverty is but you don’t. You think you have the faintest idea that there are other cultures in the world but you don’t know anything.   You feel guilty for what you have and you feel guilty for what they don’t have and you feel guilty because you know you’re just going to go back to your hotel and try not to think about it. 







While I might have wanted to spend the rest of my time in Bangkok in the comfort of my 4 star hotel, which I don’t know why I booked (I can’t afford to have standards like this) I remember that I’m travelling with another person and this isn’t an option. Hannah loves Bangkok.  She also thinks she is invincible here which is quite the contrast to my feeling that everyone I see is going to mug or kidnap me (perhaps both).  A wise owl told me this: “Travelling is all about experiencing how other cultures live, some you will like and some will really challenge you - that is the growth” (actually, it was my step mum, Rachel - Hi Rachel) While I feel disappointed in myself for not being able to embrace Bangkok I have to trust that it won’t be the same story everywhere I go. 




Getting off to a bad start is challenging because you have to find it in yourself to keep going, even though you’re terrified it isn’t going to get better, and in fact it might get worse. My mother told me that this trip would make me as a person and while that might be true, at the moment I feel as though it is just revealing things about me that I don’t necessarily want to know. I guess thats the challenge and you don’t get to chose the order of the cards life deals you. While I might have wanted some good experiences before the bad, it turned out that wasn’t up to me.  




I relive those guys taking my bag in my head as if I can change it. Thinking ‘if I hadn’t been so close to the road” “if i had been holding my iPhone” trying to find a reason why it might have been partly my fault so that I can make better sense of it but like Hannah keeps trying to tell me, it could have happened to anyone anywhere and you can take every precaution on the internet, in a place you know isn't safe and something bad can still happen. And its not your fault. 




Apparently it gets better, and i’ll keep you posted on that front. I know that if I don’t fix my attitude really soon I’ll be wasting a huge opportunity that most people in the world will never get. I need to stop being so selfish and let Hannah enjoy her trip too.  The hardest thing when you’re travelling in a pair is when one person is enjoying themselves and the other person is having a shit time and I think in some ways its probably harder for the person enjoying themselves which is yet another thing i feel guilty about it. And I suppose its all something we are going to have to work out.




So if we haven’t killed each other by my next post I’ll let you know how that goes too.  For now I’m off to the roof top pool to clear my head after such an emotional post. Maybe i’ll get a massage to cheer myself up because up until now, its a been a bit of a shit show really.