Social Travelling

"I'm running out of money, but I'm going home in three days", an Australian man told me at the 4th floor terrace in the Suksawad Hotel in Bangkok.

In the boredom of the kingdom of your ordinary life there are only so many events or places where socializing occurs, especially if you live alone. These quickly become routine. Should you wish, you can minimize them to such a level that you only ever need to meet other people, let alone talk to them, when you visit the shop to buy your daily groceries or (optionally) answer the telephone when someone calls. Master antisocial level reached.

"Damn the Thai women are beautiful", the Australian blurted out suddenly, in the midst of a conversation, after I had asked him about the Prickly Heat cooling powder I was testing.

This is not the case when travelling. During the past two weeks we've been travelling, I've had to be more social than I ever recall being. There's always something that you need to ask a local or someone you think may know, or need help with something and you have to convince others to assist you. You're also out there a lot - so you're open to other peoples' social endeavours. I've had to, or sometimes had the pleasure to, talk to people I don't know daily. This is added to the fact that, should you travel with a friend like I do, you will be talking to your travelling companion at length each day.

"Kolme kuukautta?! KOLME kuukautta?!? Eihän kukaan matkusta niin pitkään!" a slightly drunken Finnish woman exclaimed in surprise after hearing the length of our three months trip on the car ferry from Chumphon. Theirs was five weeks.

The Bus Terminal of Chumphon.

Being rather introverted and antisocial normally (though not quite at the master level yet), this social aspect of travelling is getting to me. I am the one doing most of the negotiating, the bargaining and the inquiring, yet I crave for silence and a space of my own, and there is seldom one to be had here. Though a pair of wise men said "growth happens when you enter the uncomfortable zone", it is gnawing away at my inner peace. Perhaps it is simply changing me, but the pace of it, at some point, I will have to remedy.

"Do you know where I can get this fixed?", I asked a thai shopkeeper on Koh Tao and pointed at the nearly torn band of my new messenger bag. He said he knew a place and was going on an errand in that direction. "You come with me?" he kindly asked and gave me a lift on his motorcycle.

The Car Ferry from Chumphon to Koh Tao.

Two days ago we travelled by public bus from Cha-Am to Hua Hin (30 minutes, 40 baht), by deluxe bus from Hua Hin to Chumphon (4 hours, 171 baht) and by a car ferry from Chumphon to the island of Koh Tao (6 hours, 300 baht). Between destinations we had to use an expensive local taxi (prices ranging from a haggled 140 baht to 300 baht) every time, until we finally reached our current location (by taxi from Mae Hat beach to Ao Chalok Baan Kao, 200 baht), JP Resort on Koh Tao.

"You didn't believe when I say I visit Finland, but maybe now you do", an old thai woman said in Mo Nat Thai Food & Sea Food restaurant and showed a photograph of her in Rovaniemi while a younger western female eyed us from a nearby table.

It took us all day and night, and we arrived exhausted in the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps you can imagine the amount of inquiring and haggling involved. Perhaps you can't. Perhaps all this socializing is nothing to you, or worse yet, preferable.

Most of the time I don't envy you. But there are times I do.