Bangkok street food — Seaside Sammy — Samuel German

The 4th and final episode of the story of my adventures with a boomer in Bangkok Thailand

Is it just me, or do other people also hate voice messages on whatsapp?

I woke up the next morning, and wasn’t sure how long to expect a message about my visa. Yet, there was a message waiting for me, quite early. My visa was approved, I was to come and pick my passport up at the embassy and get on a flight that evening at 7pm.

I went downstairs, the lobby was empty, and there was no sign of The Boomer. I went down the narrow alleyways and made my way to the main road. I came to the market area where I had eaten the street food with The Boomer before.

I picked up a mango smoothie and got some kind of breaded fried meat strips. The meat strips came with a bunch of rice. I got the order to go and headed back to the hotel.

Breaded fried strips. They look much better than the low quality ones I had. They also came with rice.

I found out as I was eating the strips, that they were probably pork. The rice was all stuck together and a bit cold. The breakfast of champions. The mango smoothie had a strange taste to it, perhaps due to the smog that swirled around the streets of the city. I went downstairs and had the hotel reception order a grab taxi. Grab was an app, kind of like “Uber”.

While waiting downstairs, The Boomer came walking through the front door. I told him of my plans. He said he didn’t have a lot of money, so he would take the sky train. I thought that since I was paying anyway, having company could be good. I asked him if he wanted to come with me, the grab taxi was already on the way anyway and I would pay for it 100%. He agreed and a few moments later he returned with his bag.

A Thai taxi, they drive on the wrong side of the road.

I started to get in the taxi from the right side, but there was a steering wheel waiting for me. The driver laughed and asked me, If I wanted to drive. I got into the other side and The Boomer, got in the back.

The Boomer was quiet for most of the trip and I chatted with the driver from time to time. The Boomer interjected sometimes and talked to the driver about how Bangkok used to be. The driver agreed and told me about rural towns and other cities outside of Bangkok that he described as being better and being the “real” Thai experience. I promised him, I would go there next time. He continued to discuss programs where you could learn how to cook Thai food. For $50 you could go to an old Thai woman’s house and she would teach you how to cook a meal and then afterwards you would eat together. You could also bring a friend, he mentioned. it wasn’t long before we arrived at the airport and were onto the next part of our journey.

We arrived in Dubai around 2am, and had to wait out a 3 hour layover. We had a quick meal, which led to an hour conversation. The Boomer spoke again about his island in the Philippines and about things going on there.

The Boomer didn’t take long to drift off to sleep. I was forced to figure out how to stay awake for another 2 hours.

I pulled out a book that had been given to me as a gift back in Istanbul by an Iranian girl I had met. I spent about an hour and a half reading it. When I was close to finishing it the sun was coming up and The Boomer was waking up. Another boomer had arrived and they were chatting, telling me about the adventures and experiences I was about to have in Saudi Arabia.

Seats on a plane, aren’t they beautiful?

On the plane, I sat next to a middle aged black man. He turned out to be one of my new colleagues. We chatted for most of the trip from Dubai to Riyadh. He looked like he was in his late thirties but turned out to be 49.

I could see Riyadh near the symbol on the plane’s screen showing its location. Yet, all I could see below was desert. A creamy sandy dessert. I wondered where the city was.

Then the city came into clear view. There were mostly small and medium sized buildings and a few towers. Most of the buildings were the same colors: white, cream or dark brown. We landed and soon another adventure was about to begin! Sadly, this is where the story of The Boomer ends.

Thank you for reading -also check out keepcalmandposters.com where I got this photo.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed these four episodes about my 72 hours with a boomer. If you missed the first episode you can go here: First episode.

Also if you want to see more of my blogs, stories, or book releases you can go to the facebook page and like it.

The continued story of my 3 day stay in Thailand and adventures with an old stranger.

Welcome back for the second episode of my travel story, where I visited Thailand and met a stranger. Last week I made it to Bangkok, visited the embassy, and ran into the boomer on the steps of the embassy. This is where the adventure began.

The boomer and I headed back to the embassy with our documents. We both just needed to bring photographs, which we both had left back at the hotel in the morning. Nothing too important happened. We crossed the bridge across the road, handed in our photos and headed back towards the hotel. I was started to get hungry and the boomer was in the midst of a tale about the old days in Thailand, how it used to be much cheaper until all the foreigners flocked there and ruined it. I asked him if he was hungry, and asked him which place he recommended to eat at. He told me, I could check out the sit down restaurants. Then he grimaced, “They’re a bit overpriced though. I can live on 50 Baht a day with street food,” he claimed.

There were many options, but we settled on a bazaar style setup. There was a small corridor that lead to a wide open area inside. It had a cement floor, lots of different food wagons with a variety of food options. There were around two dozen blue tables for people to sit at too. Much of the food was similar in nature varying in quality. Smoothies, breaded fried meat/seafood, and vegetable/noodles or vegetable/rice mixes.

I had a hard time deciding what to eat. I turned around and the boomer had disappeared. I settled on something similar to what you see in the photo above. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was eating, but went to search for a table. I thought the boomer had already seated, but I still couldn’t find him. I found a table on the edge that had a street view. There were around half a dozen Thai school girls sitting there. They were smiling big, giggling and chatting nervously. I sat a chair down from them, and they didn’t seem to mind.

Pick your choice of slow painful liquid death.

Finally, the boomer sat down. He had a bowl of soup, some rice and two large bottles of soda. It would be a custom for him. Later, each time I saw him shopping in Saudi Arabia, he always had several 2 liter bottles of soda and bags of chips. After repeating his earlier discussion about how he could live on 50 Baht ($1.50) a day, he started to ask me about which school I was going to work for and tell me about his teaching experiences. I told him, that I would be working for TPSU and it was my first year. He complained that they only hired young people at the university and that’s why he was working at IBS. He had been teaching in Saudi Arabia now for 7 years and working on his house in the Philippines.

What I imagined when he said he was building a house on an island. This is in Iceland though, not the Philippines.

His house was close to being completed. He was working in Saudi Arabia to pay for it and was now low on cash. He talked about the old days of Thailand and how the Philippines was now better, before returning to discuss his house.

Some random Philippe-no girl’s picture I found on Google.

Male Philippe-no labor workers, who work for $6 a day in their home country.

He went into more detail about girls in the Philippines and how cheap the labor for his house was. Then he went on a rambling tangent about how you needed a family member to guard the house while you were gone, because if not then the neighbors would break in and steal everything.

An Indian guy with a shirt made of gold.

Complaining about the thieves, led him to talk again about working in Saudi Arabia. First he talked about the Pakistani and Indian workers, who he claimed “still looked dirty even after showering”.

A photo of two Muslim reverts, found on google.

Then he discussed the other teachers and their rides to school on the bus. At the moment, I had decided not to reveal that I was a Muslim revert. He told me that there was segregation and on the teacher buses, with reverts sitting in the front and non-Muslim teachers sitting in the back. He claimed they thought they were too good for the non-Muslim westerners, seen as being dirty Kafirs (infidels). It’s worth noting that while working in Saudi Arabia and riding the same teacher’s bus I never noticed this.

His next target were his students. Saying “you have to be man, squash them like a bug. You can’t take no shit from them.” He also warned me never to get close to students or teachers, because they would try to get you to do something stupid or say something stupid and then get you fired.

Finally, he returned to his favorite topic. Telling me about all the Thai women that he had slept with. Also, he told me “When I walk into a club or bar. I look around and find the one I want, and I know I’m getting that one.” He gave me lots of tips for picking up girls, but most of it revolved around just offering money. “They usually cost 1,000-1,500 Baht ($30-45),” he said several times throughout that first day.

Sometimes, it’s best to keep an invisible piece of duck tape over one’s mouth.

Now, I attempted to speak once in awhile, but I was just cut off and he continued rambling. After forty minutes or so of him talking he would stop. It was in these pockets of time, where I realized I was now allowed to talk. That is until I said something interesting enough, for him to start talking again. I could expect him to then ramble about various topics for 30-40 minutes.

Sadly, it is that time again. For you to see the sad picture with the dreaded words “to be continued”.

The last thing that happened that first day. He invited me to come to his room the next day. He told me that he would take me to “some spots” and introduce me to the Bangkok sky train. I wondered what these “spots” what these “stomping grounds” could be.

That is it for today’s episode. What will the spots be? How does the sky train work? You’ll have to wait until next week!

72 hours with a boomer: Episode 4

72 hours with a boomer: Episode 2