Yolacola, happy Friday! Hope you are all well.

I have now been on the road for over 100 days :O

Actually didn’t think I’d reach this point or would at least start tapping out about now but I’m feeling good! I am approaching the longest I have continuously been away from the UK (132 days in my second semester at Michigan).

While wicked to have all this time travelling, in today’s issue I talk about the elephant in the room, finances. I also touch on solo-travelling and what I have been up to.

Before we get into it, for better formatting and bonus features (!?) take a lil look at joaj.net

One hundred days↗

I think over the last few weeks I have made my first true friend while solo-travelling. I met him at Muay Thai and we typically eat dinner together before training sessions.

He is doing an internship and so I normally meet him around 6ish, grab food and then go do some boxing.

Only problem was, this last week I decided to take some time to do a CBD work session. All was well but then after 15 minutes or so this other fella came into the room and started smoking. Not a problem.

Until I smelled how ‘loud’ his veggies were. You know like a sauna when someone new comes in and you kinda try and work out what their heat tolerance is?

This guy would have chucked the whole bucket of water on the coals and then pissed on it as well.

Within a few minutes the whole room was full of very pungent smoke. I was chilling and kept on doing some work on parom and stuff but after about 10 more minutes everything suddenly seemed much brighter and louder.

Ah shiiii

Without really noticing until it was too late I got way too high and it was only when I stood up to leave and realised I was actually still sitting down I understood just how high.

I was meant to meet my friend for food in about 30 minutes and then boxing afterwards. I strolled towards the mall where we were going to meet.

Bangkok is already a super over-stimulating city and very chaotic. Add being high on top of that and it is like being in a washing machine of sensory overload.

I got through dinner but there was no chance I was going to do boxing like this it would have been pretty disastrous lol

I was already having a hard time putting the food in my mouth during dinner so throwing punches let alone defending them was out of the question.

I left my friend to go on ahead to the gym while I decided to use the, now calming high, to watch the Odyssey in the mall’s cinema.

I’ll give it a 7/10 as films go. Decent, but I feel like, strangely for Nolan’s films, it overexplains things too much. I get it is based on Homer’s story but he could have interpreted it a bit less literally perhaps and added some more mystery. For a Nolan film it didn’t quite live up to the expectations I had but had some very tense scenes scattered across the running.

Running? Been doing a decent amount of it, lapping around Queen Sirikit park a few times a week in the evening when the heat has passed over.

I’ve managed to find a few local spots on my runs as well, taking different routes to the park each time. A few days ago I found that there is a pretty large outdoor food court literally just around the corner from where I stay, it pops up at around 7pm and has a lot of really good (and cheap!) food.

I’ve found that, in terms of prices, stuff is either pretty much the same price as London or very cheap. I’m either paying £4 for my cappuccino or £1.

Money can stretch far here if you go to the right places. It is just as easy to use it up quickly as well, especially around the centre.

I’ve been trying to spend no more than £10 a day on food which can typically get me 2 coffees, one brunch-type thing and a dinner. This could obviously be done for considerably cheaper but then I would be falling into questionable food-sanitary levels.

I’m going to break things down on a weekly level because it’s a lot easier.

A typical week’s costings↗

• Coffees: £25

• Brunch: £20

• Dinner: £25

• Transport: £15

• Accom: £150

• Activities (boxing, cinema, etc.): £15

• Misc (laundry, random stuff): £5

So this sums to: £255 a week

Extrapolating, this stretches to around £1k a month

How can I afford this?

At the moment the AI work and a decent stock market has been carrying me through but it is going to start getting a little tricky…

I just need to make it until Australia where I can get a ‘proper’ job to replenish my funds a bit more.

Anywhoooo if parom takes off maybe we can fly business down to aus lol

Talking about premium transport…

I finally took my first boat shuttle service earlier this week! I found a little coffee place that I had seen on google maps and decided to spend the morning there, it was very nice indeed.

Only problem was, I could Grab there but couldn’t Grab out…

It turns out the coffee shop was on an army base and I assume meant for army personnel. I have no idea how my Grab driver managed to drive through the base on the way there as the whole area was blocked off when I tried to call one back.

Welp.

Luckily, I had chosen this coffee shop because it had a view of the river which I had hardly seen so far in Bangkok.

Again, using Google maps, I saw the suggested route was to take the orange flag boat towards the centre of Bangkok, brilliant!

Where was the pier though?

I was literally in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of Bangkok at the same time. The only thing going on was alot of construction and people fishing.

I stood on this pier with some fishermen for like 45 minutes. At first I thought they were waiting with me but after they caught some fish they walked away, leaving me on my own waiting for the supposed orange flag.

Finally, a boat with a green flag came into view. It didn’t actually stop and the conductor guy beckoned me to basically make a jump onto it as it passed by which I luckily made otherwise this would be a rather different story.

Anyways, for 20 Baht (50p) I got a little bit of sightseeing in and a nice river cruise back towards the centre.

After a little recharge at the hotel (making a couple youtube videos :O) I got a text from my Muay Thai friend.

“ping-pong?”

Now I would have traditionally assumed that the question was an innocent one, inviting me to play some table-tennis.

In actual fact, the question was pointing towards one of the least innocent things possible. The notorious ping-pong show.

There are three main nightlife districts in Bangkok. You have:

• Khao San Road - Probably the most tame of them all and that’s saying something. Pretty chaotic street with lots of bars and clubs

• Soi Cowboy - An alley a little under 100m long, packed with not so subtle strip clubs and full on prostitution

• Nana Plaza - Oh my lord. This place is wack. It seems to be an old car-park with three storeys of the most promiscuous clubs/bars I have ever seen.

That evening we knocked off the latter two.

The ‘ping-pong’ show takes place on Soi Cowboy and, again I won’t say toooooo much but, involves women shooting things out of their unique cavity.

It was actually ridiculous, the place was packed, people queued up for 30 mins before the show started and there even seemed to be an American family with some young teenagers who I’m not sure knew what they were in for.

It was so crazy that it just turned into a full on comedy show. They were trying to shoot balloons with little spikes at one point and managed to completely miss and impaled this guy in the audience’s leg instead.

I am honestly gonna say I recommend going just because it’s such a (i think!) unique experience and certainly eye-opening.

After watching the show and dodging masseuses all along the rest of the street we headed towards Nana Plaza to see if it was any different.

Now I have been to Nana in the day quite alot because there is a really nice coffee shop there and didn’t know it was a nightlife place until heading there when the sun was down.

The plaza is just off the main street and into this huge, covered market-type area.

However, they aren’t selling food…

There were three storeys of clubs and bars for just about every niche sexual attraction possible.

Again, I won’t go into too much detail here but the main commodity seemed to be people.

The whole place closed after only 30 mins of us being there and suddenly we saw the other side of it.

All of the girls who I naively thought were the partners and girlfriends of guys walking around suddenly whipped out card machines and charged them, it was such a funny sight.

The whole demeanour of the place changed, guys running away trying to avoid getting charged for hanging out with a girl all night and people setting up the actual food markets for the morning, a real juxtaposition.

I am actually writing this from the Nana coffee shop at the moment but it is incredibly peaceful here now. I will escape before the carnage starts and get some more boxing in.

Hope you all have a great weekend, thank you for reading! :D

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Thought↗

Actually feeling so much better creating content, completely changed my mood over the course of a few weeks. Also taken a new approach to scrolling, if you can’t beat them, join them.

I’ve accepted that I will likely end up scrolling on something (news, insta, weather, calculator app) so I’ve decided to ‘scroll on steroids’ - that is scroll and engage properly at the same time. At the moment it comes in the form of leaving comments and stuff on the posts, not just passively consuming them but actively seeking out interesting posts.

It’s completely changed the dynamic I have with scrolling and made it enjoyable and also much easier to stop. Additionally it’s helped me reach 1.5k followers on linkedin 😮 lowkirk an influencer rn

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Album of the Week↗

Unknown Death 2002 - Yung Lean (2013)↗

Gawdamnnn, what an album. Absolute essence of early Lean. Such an interesting sound and flow from the Swedish rapper’s debut mixtape. He has since gone on to collaborate with major artists (Travis Scott, etc.) and cement both his name and Sweden in hip-hop music. Aside from music, Yung Lean is heavily involved in the art scene as well as mental-health awareness, openly speaking about his experiences. This album comes from the depths of his drug-fuelled adventures and captures his feelings and thoughts at that time. It might sound a little ‘out-there’ if you aren’t used to cloud rap but I recommend giving it a go!

My favourite song off this is probably Lightsaber // Saviour (although Gatorade is a close second). If this was even somewhat listenable, check out his later albums Unknown Memory (2014) and Stranger (2017, quite a dark album). Seeing his progression from the debut to the latest ‘Jonatan’ is so good as he gets extremely vulnerable in his songs and so you feel and hear the changing (for the better) character across his discography.

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