First trip BKK · Bangkok

I almost didn’t go to Bangkok because I was afraid of getting it wrong

A month in Bang Sue began with the wrong clothes and a search for a pharmacy, then settled into dinner at the same stall.

Written and photographed by Ethan Ward
Went: 1 month

How long · 1 month

Getting there · Flew from Paris to Bangkok, then took the train into the city

Phone · Data on an Airalo eSIM, set up before I flew

Looking down from a footbridge at a Bangkok street at night, with motorbikes and cars passing a crosswalk and lit shops. — My street in Bang Sue, from the footbridge. A still from a video I took after dark. During the day it was too hot to be outside, so I did most of my exploring at night.ETHAN WARD

I almost didn’t buy the ticket to Bangkok.

I was in Paris, where I had learned enough to get through a day. I could navigate the metro, make sense of a menu, and usually work out what was expected of me. Other European cities felt manageable too. I might not know the language, but I could often recognize enough words to begin.

In Thailand, I wouldn’t even be able to read the signs. I worried about greeting people, ordering food, negotiating a price. I didn’t know which gestures might be rude. I was afraid of getting lost and looking stupid, and of sweating through the clothes I had packed before I figured any of it out.

I bought the ticket. The clothes were a problem almost immediately.

Outside Suvarnabhumi Airport, my jeans clung to my legs. My shirt was dark with sweat before I reached the train. I was carrying a jacket because Paris had been cool when I left. Now it was another thing tucked under my arm.

I kept that jacket through the airports that followed, carrying it around until I finally wore it again in Hanoi. I had packed for more than one climate. Unfortunately, I had to carry all of them.

By the time I reached my apartment in Bang Sue, my shirt was stuck to my back. I went straight for the air conditioning and stayed inside until night. At 9 p.m., I went out and started sweating again.

Finding a pharmacy

I had chosen Bang Sue because I wanted to stay somewhere less oriented toward visitors. I had also attached a lot of significance to that choice, as if choosing the right neighborhood would somehow make me better at being there.

Around the apartment were small shops, street vendors, temples, and laundromats. I was taking an AI policy program remotely, logging in for classes with students from around the world. I could sit in my apartment discussing the governance of complicated systems. Outside, I still had to work out where to buy things.

On day 3, I woke up with a fever, congestion, and body aches. I wanted medicine and someone who could help me find it. I needed a pharmacy.

I went out into the heat, sweating and dizzy, looking for a sign I could recognize. A cross, maybe. A mortar and pestle. Something that would tell me I was in the right place without requiring me to read Thai.

I passed the same corner twice. Google Maps kept spinning, or I kept turning the wrong way. I stopped, breathing hard, trying not to panic.

A woman passed carrying bags of vegetables. A dog lay in the shade. Nobody appeared to be paying attention to me. I had been so worried about looking incompetent, and here I was, sick and lost on a corner, with no audience I could see.

I tried Apple Maps. It pointed me toward a place nearby. I walked until I found a storefront with white walls, a glass counter, and rows of products that looked pharmaceutical.

Inside, I gestured at my throat and head. The pharmacist nodded, brought out bottles, and wrote dosage instructions using numbers I could understand. I paid, went back to the apartment, and slept for 2 days.

I hadn’t managed an elegant conversation. I had managed to get help.

Ethan Ward in a bucket hat and glasses holds up a plastic pharmacy bag of medicine on a Bangkok sidewalk. — Leaving the pharmacy with my medicine, sweat on my upper lip.ETHAN WARD

Dinner down the street

When I felt well enough to go out again, I bought cheap cotton shorts and sleeveless shirts from a market. I was still going to sweat. At least I could stop doing it in jeans.

I started choosing food because it looked good, even when I didn’t know what it was called. Before leaving Paris, I had worried about how I would manage in an unfamiliar country. In Bang Sue, I needed something to wear and something for dinner.

There was a night market down the street from my building, under the elevated train line. I started going during that first week. Vendors sold grilled pork, sticky rice, som tam, and iced tea in plastic bags tied with rubber bands.

Food stalls lit beneath a concrete elevated line at night, with yellow crates and people walking between them. — The night market under the elevated line, a couple of blocks from my building.ETHAN WARD

At the som tam stall, the woman smiled when she saw me. Sometimes I ordered. Sometimes I stood there sweating, trying to decide what I wanted. She smiled either way.

Once, I accidentally paid too much and walked away. She chased me down to return the extra money.

I went to her stall almost every night for a month. We never exchanged names. I couldn’t tell you much about her life, and she couldn’t have known much about mine. What I knew was that I liked going back. Dinner had become one part of the day I knew how to do.

A vendor in a red apron works behind a stall of grilled sausages and skewers at a night market. — Grilled sausages and skewers at the same market. I didn’t take many photos of the cooks. It was their neighborhood, and they were working.ETHAN WARD

On my last night in Bang Sue, I went back to the stall.

The woman smiled. I wanted the moment to feel different because I was leaving, though I didn’t know whether she knew that. I ordered my usual: som tam, grilled pork, and sticky rice.

She packed the food into a plastic bag and said something in Thai I didn’t understand. After a month of going back, I still couldn’t tell whether it was a thank-you, an invitation to return, or something else entirely.

I smiled and said the thank-you I knew.

She waved, and I walked away with my dinner.