Day 113! Today was my last day near Khaosan road. This is because I’m heading across the city to spend a few days at a new friend’s house. I’m looking forward to seeing a new part of town and seeing what these next three days have in store for me!

Even with going to bed early, I started my day at 10am with another soup from the nearby alleyway restaurant. I also had a nice FaceTime with my cousins, who will be arriving in a few days!!

Yen Ta Fo was a great dish to start my day with. It’s quickly become one of my favorite soups I’ve had in SE Asia.

I went back to my hostel, packed up my things, and checked out. But I didn’t leave, I just hung out in the lobby all morning. Today I was heading to a friend of a friend’s house to spend a few nights with them!

My friend Jason from college has a friend that lives in Bangkok with his wife and child. Jason connected us and they graciously offered me to stay with them. I was excited to have a change of pace and check out a new part of a city while meeting new people!

But before I left, I wandered to find a used book store since I finished my book the other day.

It took me half an hour to look through the books and decide which one I wanted. They had a ton of the Jack Reacher series and also a number of Wilbur Smith novels, both of which I’ve read a book of recently.

But I decided to go with a classic and a book I haven’t read yet… the Hobbit!

On my way back to the hostel, I stopped by a food stand selling my favorite meal. Rice with a couple different dishes!

I of course had to enjoy it with a cheap mango smoothie, and I’m glad I had it. The worker at the stand asked me if I wanted spicy and double checked, after I said yes, before he served me my two choices of dishes.

This must’ve been one of the spiciest meals I’ve had in Thailand so far. Thankfully it was to a point I could still enjoy the meal… but it was pushing it.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon in the lobby of my hostel chatting with the owner (from India), an older guy from the US, Jin from South Korea, and a Thai lady that lives next door.

It was a nice way to spend the afternoon, but I received a text from my host Nico saying it was time for me to head over!

The price of grab was far too expensive for me to go the 30 minute drive… so I found a route with the bus stops and made my way to figure out how it all worked (Nico also gave me some advice for using the busses).

It took 5 minutes of waiting at the stop for the first bus to come. I hopped on, what I thought was, the right bus and started making my way towards Nico’s house… but then out of nowhere, the bus changed directions!

It luckily evened out with the road I was supposed to be going down… so when I saw we were close to a stop I needed to transfer busses at I quickly hopped off and started my couple minute walk to the next bus stop.

This trip cost me 8 Baht!! The grab driver was going to cost closer to 300 Baht.

I quickly made it to the next bus stop and immediately three busses numbered 93 rolled by and I didn’t get on them because I was waiting for 11. Turns out, I could’ve taken the 93 to the same place and saved some time. But not long after, a bus 11 showed up and I paid another 8 baht for this bus.

But this bus would actually take me basically all the way to my destination!

The bus was fairly empty when I got on and I easily got a seat and space for my bag. But the further we got on our journey, the more packed the bus got!

The busses in Thailand are pretty crazy. They won’t stop fully moving sometimes and people have to hop on and off of them… but they also don’t always stop at the bus stop because traffic is in the way. So people run to the bus in the middle of the road! It was a sight to see

After an hour plus ride on the no AC’d bus, I arrived at the correct stop. I then started on a 15 minute walk to Nico’s house!

I arrived to their house and was warmly greeted by both Nico and his wife! Their (almost) 2 year old was running around playing with everything he could get his hands on.

Nico and I took the time before dinner to get to know each other and learn more about each other’s lives.

This is Nico’s 4th time in Thailand but he’s planning on staying for a bit. He’s currently working on his masters at the university I passed through on my walk back from Lumphini park!

After chatting for an hour or two, it was time to go exploring for dinner. Apparently, a cheap buffet just opened up near their house and we went to go check it out.

This meal was not something I’d normally eat and was wayyy over my budget for one meal… but I thought, why not treat myself once and why not do it with new, cool people. I had seen these types of restaurants before and had refrained from checking them out…

So I spent 500 Baht on an all you can eat buffet with lots of meats and seafoods.

During this meal I tried something I never thought I’d try. I ate jelly fish and it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great.

We stayed at the restaurant for a while, munching on the foods we’d been cooking over our charcoal. We all chatted about different things until Nico got very tired and we had to take him home!

It was cool to have the experience of the SE Asian buffet, but I don’t need to spend that much on a meal any time soon.

We made our way back to their house and we stayed up late chatting about deep topics and continuing getting to know each other!

Nico has class tomorrow… but he invited me along! So tomorrow, I’m going to see what Thai university is like. Unfortunately, it involves waking up around 5am, so I need to go to bed hours ago!

– Elie

(I haven’t asked Nico’s family if they’d be comfortable in the blog yet, so maybe in the next couple days you’ll see more pictures of them)