Home Sweet Home

So, I went to Bangkok last Wednesday using International Express which was a 22-hour ride. Remind me not to use the train again, it was a torture. But, that's not what I want to talk about. I'd really not like for this entry to sound like a rant, but for the first time of my life, I cut a trip short just because I really couldn't adjust to the environment of the place that I was visiting.

Don't get me wrong, Bangkok is a nice city. In fact, it looks a lot like Kuala Lumpur, and I LOVE Kuala Lumpur. But when one of your missions of travelling was also to try out new foods, that's when you started to have issues. Bangkok seems to be filled with nice foods and they had a lot of street hawkers that sell many kinds of snacks, fruit cuts, and even main dishes like fried chicken and other stuffs. But too bad their halal status is almost always unknown. Whenever I was interested in a food that looked so delicious, I would just ask, "Muslim?" since they didn't understand anything I said, and I could say that 99% of the shops/restaurants/hawkers that I went to said no. On the first day I arrived, being as naive as I was, I walked around Saphan Khwai BTS station area which was filled with tasty-looking foods. After searching for almost an hour, I resorted to eating a dry garlic bread just because everything was not halal there.

I searched for the information on halal food in Bangkok and many experiencers reported that they needed to take a train to a mall that has only one halal food stall in one whole food court. I might also go to Nana BTS station and I went there once. Nana was like a little Middle Eastern, and there were a lot of halal places, but the station was quite far from my hotel. I wouldn't take a train everytime I wanted to eat.

On the second day, things became unnecessarily difficult. I was always OK with language barrier. I visited Istanbul twice before and I could say not so many people could speak in English but the trip was very enjoyable. However, in Bangkok, when you couldn't find halal food, and you couldn't communicate almost at all with the local people, my patience started to wear thin. The frustration was added by the fact that it was also quite hard to find a place to perform your prayers and the only place I could go was, of course, my hotel room.

I don't want to sound like a spoiled traveler who needs to have everything nice in his trip, but these aspects are important to me when traveling. So, because of the difficulties, I cut my trip short and from the original 5-day plan, it became 2-day. I did not care about money at all and I just want to get out of there, so I changed the flight date.

When I reached Penang, suddenly my home here is not just a home, it's a home sweet home.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that Bangkok is a terrible city, it is actually quite nice for me. But language barrier, food barrier, and religious performance for me are things that I need to observe when traveling. However, the difficulties might be contributed by the fact that I was not familiar with the place. So, I'm sure a lot of you out there have gone to Bangkok and enjoyed it. But not for me though. This might be the first and the last time.