Bangkok: Days 6 to 10

April 17, 2024

Bangkok: Days 6 to 10

Daisy just got in the Grab taxi and left the guesthouse. I feel empty now.

We spent the past four days staying at U&D Guesthouse. On Monday, we tried to enter The Grand Palace, but I wore shorts, not pants, and was denied entry. Daisy went exploring by herself there.

On Tuesday, we did a day trip to Ayutthaya. It took me a while to figure out where to buy the train ticket at Bang Sue train station. I got frustrated. As it turned out, it was the building next to it called Krung Thep Aphiwat Central Terminal Station.

The train ride was a little over an hour long and only cost 20 THB per person, or about $0.78. At first I thought about walking to all the temples, but the weather was so hot and the distance was too long. We ended up hiring a tuk-tuk for 600 THB (~$16.67) for the day and saw six or seven different temples in Ayutthaya. We took the train back to Bangkok around 4 PM.

Yesterday, I didn’t do anything during the day while Daisy went shopping on Khaosan Road to buy things for her family. Before the sunset, we walked to Wat Saket temple and climbed the stairs to the top to see the sunset. It was our last outing together. After having dinner, we came back to the guesthouse and spent the last night there.

Two nights ago, I had a long phone call with my friend Merritt and chatted about what I should do when I come back to the US. I hope to get a web programming job by studying more JavaScript when I come back. I look forward to living in King of Prussia again with Merritt and Brooks, who was my coworker in Vanguard and moved to Merritt’s house after me.

The thought of returning home excited me more than continuing to travel. I was thinking so much about life after traveling that I was in agony yesterday. I ended up buying a flight ticket to Philadelphia from Singapore via San Francisco on May 13. I will arrive in Philly on the morning of May 14. I also bought a ticket from Phnom Penh to Singapore on May 8 so that I will spend five days in Singapore before my flight home.

Right now, I feel a bit sad that Daisy left and I will have less than a month of traveling. I had bought a butterfly necklace made from damascene metal in Kyoto early in my trip. I gave that to Daisy. I hope it will give her some transformative strength in her future.

It’s a good feeling of sadness when something is about to end and something new will start. I had a great time traveling for over nine months now. By the time I reach home I would have traveled for ten months and two days. That’s a long time. I learned so much about what I like and don’t like. I hope I will do my best to make the world a better place once I return home.

If I’m able to return to Vanguard that’ll be great. I really care about people having access to investment opportunities. Many people I came across in my travels don’t know or don’t have access to the stock market. I feel they are missing out. I want to work for a company that can help everyone in the world to become financially secure, not just Americans and other people from developed countries.

I have so much to look forward to when I get home and so many things I want to do. When the future looks better than the present it’s better to move on and do the next thing. I’ve seen so many things in Asia already and I have no regret of not going to Laos and Indonesia, as they are the only two countries in Southeast Asia that I didn’t go to. I hope to be back in Asia in the future, though. As to when, I don’t know. I still want to bicycle across Europe and travel to South America some time in the future. But for now, I just want to go home.