[Travel Fail] Ventured Down The Wrong Street In Bangkok

Back in December of 2017, when I visited Bangkok Thailand for the first time, I made a common mistake that Explorers make and ventured down the wrong street. This was a serious TRAVEL FAIL!!

Thankfully, nothing crazy happened other than a little finger pointing and embarrassment. (I can live with that)

I was venturing out from my hotel one night and started walking down a street that appeared to be a street full of vendors (and it actually was), but as I walked further down the street, it turned into what appeared to be a little more residential and quite honestly, a lot more sketchy than how it first started out.

Little to my knowledge, I had just encountered my first street of Shop Houses.

I was totally green to what the City of Bangkok had to offer. Bangkok, like many cities, has pockets of very nice areas and then you can walk one or two streets over and quickly find yourself lost walking along a sketchy alley.

This, my friend, was one of those sketchy alleys. For real!!

As I started walking down the street people began looking at me kind of strange and pointing and laughing. I immediately noticed that I was the only person of color walking down this dark alley and I'm pretty sure they knew that I didn't know where I was going and I probably didn't belong there.

But as I got closer to the end of the street people started pointing up to this one particular shophouse. I guess they assumed that I was coming to buy something or see somebody who must caters to foreigners. Who knows?!!

What I do know is, they were looking REALLY suspicious.

Once I got to the end of the street and realized that it was a dead end. There was a large 15 foot wall that let me know that this was the end of the road.

I slowly turned around and acted as though I was just taking a leisurely walk through this very intimate yet foreign neighborhood.

I call it “intimate” because I could tell that they all knew each other VERY well and I was the one that had just walked into their “homes” unannounced.

I briskly made my way through the sea of Thai laughter and extended fingers and made a concerted effort to not make any eye contact.

Needless to say, I made it out of there alive. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this…

But on a serious note, Thai people are really cool and very welcoming. That alley just didn’t look inviting and was very spooky looking. I’ve been back to Thailand several times since then and guess what? I’ve ventured down more dark alleys.

Hey!! My Travel Style is an Explorer!! That’s what we do.

If you want to learn what your Travel Style is, click here and take a super quick assessment. You might be surprised to see what your results are.

My advice to you, if you’re not an Explorer, stay away from creepy alleys.