jeudi 21 mai 2015

Charming encounter...

I came back to France weeks ago and I think it's time I wrote about what happened when I left Battambang in Cambodia to go to Bangkok and Ko Tao in Thailand.

When I arrived in Bangkok, my first goal was to find a place to stay.
After spending an hour looking for a cheap guesthouse, I realized that a lot of old memories were coming back to my mind... (I visited Bangkok many times 5 years ago with my ex-boyfriend, some friends and family members)

In a minute, I felt tired, thirsty, hungry and lonely… 
I had crossed a shitty border and spent hours in buses. I decided to stop walking for a minute and smoke a cigarette to let this wave of sadness go as fast as it came.

I looked at the people in the street and asked a guy for a lighter.
He was smiling at me and asked if I was in trouble when he saw that I was about to cry.
I said that everything was alright, I had just been overwhelmed by old memories, I just arrived from Cambodia and needed a cheap place to stay.
 
He introduced himself, his name was Rommel, he was half-jamaican half-english and just arrived from Ko Phi Phi were he was working in a tatoo shop, on his way to New-Zealand to visit his mother.
After a 10 minutes conversation, I decided to visit the guesthouse he was staying to ask if they have a cheap dormbed for me. 
And I was "lucky", they had one !
My day just started to be brigther…
I was happy to finaly drop my bag on a room floor and was ready to explore Bangkok.

Later, I accepted to go out have some food with this guy.
We went to an indian restaurant next door, so good and amazingly cheap. Conversation was fluent about travels, family and so on.
We decided to meet again the next day… and the next day… and the day after...

I spent 3 days having a lot of fun, discovering this "nice" guy full of surprises…
We went to the swimming pool, walked around the city, had food & drinks in different places, I met some of his thai friends, we went out dancing in a club, did a one-hour tuk-tuk ride around Bangkok...
We shared and laughted a lot.
He was very generous with people in the street, locals asking for money or tourists for cigarettes. He even bought a bottle of water for a guy vomiting outside of a club at 3 o’clock in the morning !
He nicely offered me to brought my dirty clothes to the laundry with his the day I decided to have a massage.
Once, he asked me to close my eyes in a restaurant and put a bracelet around my wrist as a gift.
It was a bit too much but I decided to just enjoy the present moment, I was going to leave soon.

As often when you meet people while travelling, you have different plans than them and at one point, you have to say good bye.

The day I was leaving he asked to use my iphone because he wanted to send a message to his mother, I gave it to him and said I was going to meet him at the reception later because I needed to have a shower and pack my bag quickly.

After my shower, I packed my bag and realised a lot of money was missing…
A little voice in my head immediately convinced me that he took it and that he wasn’t going to wait for me at the reception with my iphone and, sadly… I was right.
Clothes, phone, money… I « just » lost around 1000 euros !!!

But how did I also lost my instinct to avoid bad people ???

In 3 days he had done everything to make me trust him…  
He even had tears in his eyes talking about his complicated family story...
I was a pray since the first minute he saw me, that's for sure. 
He knew exactly what to do, what to say, how to say it and when...
He is a professional lyer, manipulator, robber, scammer, thief...
Real name : WASIM NASIR from IRAN.
The worst guy I ever met...

If you meet this guy, don't trust him, never ever... 
He will just fly away with whatever he can take...



I had been trying to write about that for weeks but couldn't.
I hope this post is going to help me free myself from guilt and help others to be more careful than I was.

mardi 14 avril 2015

CAMBODIA - Battambang

I'm already back in France but I still have a lot to publish about my 2-months trip in Southeast asia.
As often when I get back, I'm feeling lonely and disoriented…
I hope that publishing about the end of my trip will help me to deal with that...

My last cambodian stop before crossing the thai border was Battambang (mid-march 2015).

 Central Market







 A cinema, not in use anymore










I discovered this pretty quiet town with a rented bike and 2 girls I met at "Tomato Guest House".

Abandoned train station




 





 Abandoned airport





Cambodian circus







Bamboo train













Bat Cave