I typically set six alarms for important events. Naturally, this idea frequently backfires and creates needless anxiety for me….

The vegetable truck leaves at noon—there’s no way we are going to sleep until noon. There’s also no way my paranoia will let me go five minutes without looking at my watch. Still, in my excitement I ruminate about everything that could possibly go wrong (…shout-out to childhood conditioning). In my head this trip was going to be the hard reset to the fucked-up beginning that had left me with an ever-shorter growing temper toward my two best friends.

As usual, the worry was unnecessary. We gathered our things, turned in the guesthouse key and asked the first tuktuk driver we saw to take us Warorat Market. The driver was very friendly, making sure we got off where we wanted to be, though this was complicated by the fact that we ourselves didn’t entirely know. We told him we were trying to get to Aynap and he stared back at us inquisitively, cocking his head, trying to force those syllables into the name of a destination he could find in his head. Mr. Friendly started asking other drivers and pointing at a map of Thailand while everybody smiled and laughed ingratiatingly at our communication dilemma. The likelihood of this guy having directed anyone to some random vegetable truck that travels to an obscure destination was pretty slim so we finally said thanks and excused ourselves from the presence of a genuinely nice guy. Though not helpful in the immediate sense, I was very appreciative of the positive interaction we just experienced.

According to the directions we were given there was a market nearby, so we stumbled around for a few minutes before we saw the Nakornping Bazaar and a little white truck.

This vegetable truck truck contained two elderly Thai women and zero pounds of vegetables. We looked at the women and repeatedly said the word Aynap in a questioning tone. More smiles and laughing ensued before a highly-energetic man—the driver—came up to us and confirmed we were in the right place.

Lauren and I left our bags in the truck with Andrew and went to go get snacks for the ride. We bought some water, juice and yogurt, then became disoriented and got lost. Thankfully we didn’t panic (I have never overreacted before) and eventually when something looked familiar enough that we made our way back to the dilapidated truck and offered some waters to our two Thai friends, who looked extremely bewildered by the goodwill of the white ghosts.

The driver came around with a bunch of boxes and loaded them on the truck. More people came and we all smiled at each other in a sort of WTF is going on way. More boxes came and I realized we weren’t leaving until the truck was sufficiently overfilled.

So…more people, more boxes, driver walked around and said something, got in the truck and quickly downed an M-150. An M-150 is a popular energy thank is supposedly banned in the US. Cans and bottles of it litter the city’s streets—it’s like a scene from a horror movie where a new street drug takes over and causes users to litter, behave erratically, and then slump over, becoming more useless than when they were sober. It probably has some kind of amphetamine or pesticide in it. The driver made a quick walk-around the truck, said some stuff that would’ve been funny if we would’ve understood Thai (based on everyone else laughing), smiled at us and we hit the road!!

The ride was mostly uneventful except for the fire we saw on the streets from the bunches of tangled electrical wires. When we stopped at a gas station and I wondered what real incentive these people had to not just leave us in the filthy restrooms while we pissed and drive away with the majority of our belongings…thankfully I just had a childhood that prompts irrational worries that hardly ever become realities.

After picking back up on the road, we made a few more stops, dropping people and some boxes off as well as picking a few more up to replace them. I smiled to myself at what a quaint and personal delivery system this was. It had a sense of community that I’m just not used to. There was one woman who got off the truck and took a giant bag of raw red meat with her; the bag had been sitting under our unrefrigerated feet for the four-hour trip. Traveling is so important to me because it helps reshape the ideas in my head of how many ways there are to accomplish things.

Shortly after raw meat lady got off the driver stopped the truck and started pointing toward a dirt road, motioning for us get off. It was at this point, staring down dirt road that veered off into vegetation and then seemingly disappeared, I smiled, thought back to the situations we that brought us here, and started walking.

Oh yeah…this post ended up being so long that I’ll probably split the “impressions” section into another post….