2025-11-29 Journal Entry

Words words words. I walked all around Bangkok today, or tried to at least. I walked all the way to centralw0rld, mostly because I wanted to walk more of the city, and I went mostly looking for some clothes, none of which I found. I ordered the shoes I think I want instead, and the shirt and belt will have to come later, I guess. I’m sure I’ll find them eventually, but Uniqlo and Muji did not come through for me this time around.

I’m staying in a hostel for the first time in quite some time. I’ve been in hotels lately mostly because it’s Asia and it’s extremely affordable to do so. Why stay in a hostel for $5 when you could get an apartment for $13? I’ve only spent like half of my accomodation budget this month, and I’ve only just now stayed in a hostel on the second-to-last day of the month. SEA is magic(ally affordable).

It’s funny, I have so many opinions of other foreigners here. I guess that’s always true, but there’s a particular class of foreigners that for whatever reason make my skin crawl. There’s all the other touristy people, and they’re all fine. But every so often I see some schmuck in shorts and a tank top, walking with a local girl, going to a restaurant or something, and it makes me feel icky. Perhaps it’s because they sorta just seem like dumpy guys, and they probably just made some money and moved to Cambodia to cost for the rest of their life purely on a little bit of money and access to a really strong currency. I don’t know.

My main example of this – did I write about this already? I forget – was a guy I met on the first day of my Angkor Wat trip. Bulgarian guy, aforementioned tank top (a no-no in an ancient holy site, but I digress), barefoot shoes (laughing-nervous-face, is this how I look?), and a sort of strangely intense stare. Said it was his dream to come to Angkor Wat. His first time here, though he had said it was his plan to retire here. Why exactly I didn’t have time to ask, but he didn’t seem to have any obvious connection to the place. He was traveling with another Bulgarian guy who I didn’t speak to but the two seemed to be friends. But those Bulgarians are hard to read – pretty straight-laced, serious fellows, those two.

But that does certainly seem to be a Type of Guy. The other tourists that annoy are the same people that would annoy me everywhere else, to be honest: the (usually young) groups traveling around that are loud at, in my mind, obviously-bad times. Like, you don’t need to be shouting and trying to jump and touch the ceiling in line at immigration. I admit that I feel a bit curmudgeonly saying things like that, as if I were the old man telling kids to get off my lawn. But I think there’s a good reason that tourists get a bad rap in most tourist-heavy countries, and it’s people like that. SEA especially seems to be the destination for pretty annoying people unfortunately. But I’m starting to sound a bit like a grump.

Perhaps a subject for a longer piece of writing, but I feel like I haven’t gotten to know these places really at all, if I’m being honest. Or maybe I do know them and just haven’t felt the resonance on a particularly deep level. I’ve enjoyed seeing them, but I believe that I need to be putting more on the line, so to speak.

(For some reason I feel like I’m repeating myself, not sure if I’ve written all of this down in earlier places. If so, apologies. Anyways:)

I watched a video of a guy learning Chinese where he said the thing he does to force himself to use the language is to use the concept of a McGuffin from films. McGuffins are things like the briefcase from Pulp Fiction: something whose contents are never revealed, but that the viewer is told is important such that it can drive the story forward. The thing itself is irrelevant, but it needs to be done. Go find some batteries or buy a bottle of wine from a street vendor. Talk to them about it, ask questions, see the world. Something to think about.