My friends and I stepped off the plane and began trying our best to get through customs and obtain our luggage, all while battling a staggering feeling of jetlag. Our mission was a success as we found ourselves finally stumbling into our hostel around 1:00 AM in an outright daze.
Check-in took place at a tiny dimly lit bar that was still buzzing with people from all walks of life, indulging in foreign beers and cheap smokes. Once we were finally squared away with the extremely tolerant employee at the “front desk” (a small table that sits next to the bar), we followed a very sweet, and very small, Thai woman up two flights of stairs to our dorm that we will be sharing with eight other travelers for the next few days.
Getting settled into our shared, and pitch black, sleeping quarters in the middle of the night was far from graceful. We stumbled over suitcases, stubbed our toes on bedposts, and swore under our breath uncontrollably. Once I had kind of situated my belongings into a pile in the corner and likely awoken every innocent sleeper in the room, I decided a shower was in order. So I scooped up my Ziploc bags full of toiletries and headed toward the communal bathroom with a few of my friends.
We peeled off our sweaty travel clothes that had been glued to our bodies for the last 20+ hours and gloriously scrubbed the airport grime off our skin. As I began to exit the shower, wrapped up in a towel and still dripping with lukewarm (kind of grey colored…) water, I was stunned to see, and hear, a group of drunk British guys bombarding the bathroom. I’m not sure they even noticed us for a full minute as we stood there awkwardly wide-eyed and practically in the nude.
They finally acknowledged us but their reactions were not what I had expected, “Hey we’re heading out to the bar in the lobby to grab another beer if you guys wanna join”, one of the more coherent ones shouted in our direction. Now my memory isn’t completely crystal clear from this moment, considering my lack of sleep at the time, but I’m pretty sure we just stood there with the most confused and idiotic looks plastered on our faces. The guys walked out, unfazed by our bewilderment, and we had the most fantastic moment/realization that this uncertainty, culture shock, and insanity is what our lives were going to be like from now on. Thank God.
