My sleep at Nap Park Was pretty good considering I was in a 22 bed room; it had AC and people were surprisingly very quiet I honestly felt like I was the loudest one zipping bags and mild coughing. I only slept for 3 hours, probably because I slept a little on the plane and from excitement and went for a walk to the river. I checked out around 8 am and was finally able to check in at my booked place, Jam Hostel. When I got in my room (4 person) it was just one other person and me which was really nice (more on him tomorrow).
Breakfast was included but was all make-it-yourself so I decided to make eggs which was pretty embarrassing because I got them stuck to the pan and had to scrape them off while the guy before me did it so easily. At this point I still didn’t have a sim and of course the Wi-Fi in the hostel went down the night before and wasn’t online yet so I asked the front desk where a AIS shop was (like a Verizon store basically) and she gave me very vague directions so again, I wandered out with no data, no phone ability, and no useable map. Luckily I found it and was able to get one that was unlimited 4mb/s with a phone number for 650 baht. 30gb at the airport for 30 days was double this so im kind of glad I didn’t give in there even though it would have saved me a good amount of trouble. I also met two people in there who also had just gotten there and we talked for a bit and enchanted info.
Bed at Jam Hostel
My hostel has a nice outdoor seating area overlooking the river so I sat there, and started talking to some people. One of the first people I started talking to was Maticc (like Matisse) who tried going to Vietnam but didn't have his Visa yet so had to book an emergency ticket in Ho Chi Minh to here to avoid being sent back to Slovenia. We hit it off, talked to some other people and decided to go for a walk. We visited a bunch of temples and street markets and walked at least 15km for about 6 hours and just having a good time visiting some less touristy places.
Maticc and I at Lunch
After getting back we went to the restaurant across the road and I accidentally ordered Sweet and Sour but with meat instead of tofu. This is not the type of place you can just send back food and I told myself before I started this trip that I could eat meat. It ended up being really good but chicken doesn’t taste like what I remember and I probably would’ve liked the tofu more. We also had beers and talked about a little bit of everything for a long time; from girls life before traveling, to being gay. He told me I was the first gay person he had met that he actually enjoyed interacting with. When I told him earlier in the day he didn’t make to big a deal out of it and I wasn’t sure about the culture in Slovenia to know if this was taboo or weird for him but he was really chill about it and had a good time.
When we got back to the hostel we started chatting with a group of 5 other people; Ben(UK construction worker), Armani(UK guy who I later found out was my roommate) and Jade( UK and has been traveling for a while), and after another beer from 7/11 and them all smoking weed, we decided to go check on a “party” at another hostel that Jade heard about. It happened to be the one I stayed at the night before so I think they let me get away with drinking for free as a “guest” and using the bathroom. They gave us free food which was pretty good and lot of free shots as part the drinking games they had. I made Jades friend Mira and they told me about all their travels and we talked for a long time about what I should do here, recommendations and a whole notes app of suggestions. I got their instagrams and will probably be asking them for help along the way.
After a bottle of Soju and rice wine ($6 which is very expensive for here) we all decided to go to a club Armani said he knew. We walked for like 30 minutes and he couldn’t find the place so we asked two tuk tuks to take us (there was like 9 of us shoved in these two. Well while the tuk tuk drivers were discussing where we were trying to go and probably very confused, Armani decided he didn't want to wait, got in the front seat and took off in our tuk tuk down the street. He eventually stopped after we all yelled at him to and the driver came screaming after him. The driver surprisingly didnt kick us out and for some reason still took us to where we wanted to go (for 20 baht each) which ended up being on a street we already walked along. The place was in a back alley and when we showed up, it was just our group of 9, not a single other person. It was honestly pretty fun but me and a couple others decided to head back early. I got back to the Hostel around 11:30 and went to bed after talking to some girls in the lobby.
Im having so much fun here and being pretty social which is something I was worried about. I can still tell that I'm not as outgoing as some of the other people here but everyone is really chill, not judgmental, and respectful (except for him stealing the tuk tuk)