Day of fear.

Appropriate clothing for -3 celsius.
I was fine in the airport - even though it was -3 and I was wearing two t shirts and cropped trousers and had no British money on me (slight oversight on my part), I survived the flight - despite three small boys and two incompetent parents being seated in front of me (and I know having small kids on a plane is hard but these were definitely incompetents), and I made it from airport to hotel without using a cab - though a direct bus to khao san road was involved. I felt a bit close to melting point and absolutely naked without a mobile phone or internet access... all that has changed.

So far i've been through a few stages of ridiculous pride at achieving baby steps.

First step: Find room I'm happy in where I feel safe. Check! (-ish, in my jetlagged paranoia I might have cable locked my backpack to my bathroom when I left the room for the first few times.)

Second step: Get water since I completely failed to do this at the airport (duh!) Check!

Third step: Recover from culture shock. I cleverly combined my water trip with buying a Thai sim and decided I was brave enough to wander Rhambuttri road to look for a phone to attach said sim to. Shiny things distracted me down a side alley and I ended up on Khao San Road around 8pm just as the night was starting. I'm pretty sure that for every step I took someone offered to sell me something, to do something to my hair, to put me up for the night or to let fish nibble my feet (that one looked like fun, i'll be going back there!). I said "no" a lot (today I upgraded that to "mai ow ka" - no thank you in Thai - raised a few eyebrows...I'm probably saying it wrong), shook my head and stepped around a lot of people.
It was information overload and I behaved a lot like a computer getting too much information - went really slow and rejected everything. I've seen pictures of severe poverty and handicapped beggars but I only realised I'd stepped around a man with no legs and only one arm lying in the road shaking his cup about a minute later when my brain caught up. Having failed at phone (they weren't selling things like that at this time of night - I asked) and feeling completely out of my depth, but proud for having walked up and down the street twice (I still couldn't absorb it all), I retreated to my hotel and room for a breath of cold air and a much needed shower.
Had curry dinner in hotel, dangled my feet in the pool while reading and went to bed.

Everything looks better in the light of day. I bought a phone (which involved walking a few streets away), sent some texts, made a few lists, logged onto the internet and welled up with relief at hearing from people I knew, wandered a much less hectic daylit Khao San road, I even managed to take a few awful pictures - in my defense I was about to get run over by a cab and a tuk tuk - I'm still not convinced that they wouldn't actually do it.
Khao San road is much less scary in the light of day but that cab was definitely not stopping.
I tried on some clothes in the street...oh my god there's a statue of the Dalai llama in the corner, I'd never noticed that before. It's a little creepy. There's a whole two rows of buddhist monk statues praying to a buddha statue in the restaurant on the side of the hotel I'm in. Interesting.

Oh yeah and Tor arrived bringing with her a magical notebook meaning that I no longer have to pay for the internet and so can waffle on for ages about ridiculously trivial tasks causing me great happiness. It was insanely wonderful to see a familiar face, which is all that I have on the cards for the next few days anyhow what with seeing Brucey tomorrow and then Jada in the evening. Tor's going to be hanging around with me until the 16th and we'll be heading for a beach soon to get away from the hecticness. Hopefully I'll be a bit more settled and braver after that, and this will have been my last post about managing to find basic amenities.