He was drunk.
Settling himself amid some cushions on the floor of the Bangkok hostel, it was nearing midnight and myself and a few female med students from England were chatting about our travels. He was American, 25, and he had just come back from a club in Bangkok that he described as insane and messed up. Relishing the attention these words received, he proceeded to detail a place with alcohol, drugs, Thai girls performing sex acts onstage, and a few other things that needn’t be repeated here. Honestly, they don’t really need to be repeated anywhere.
It was strange timing. A few minutes before he arrived, I had just finished explaining to the other students, how I had been working in Indonesia the past six months at an aftercare center for girls who had formerly been trafficked in the sex trade. As the belligerent male spoke about the club, they began casting nervous glances in my direction, though my facial expression never changed (a combination of how tired I was and the nasty facial wounds from the previous night, making any facial expressions quite discomforting). As the conversation continued, I found out the girls I had just met (all in their early twenties) had also been to a similar club during their travels, though they were quick to say they didn’t like it at all and one girl admitted she had cried for two days straight afterwards.
The suddenly somber (though not entirely sober) mood was cut short when one of the girls checked her phone and reminding her friends that they were wanting to go out starting at midnight. Thankful for a diversion from the unpleasant conversation our visitor had brought in with him, they enthusiastically went back upstairs to get their things, leaving me with the guy who was still nursing a beer. For a moment, the silence between us was deafening.
LondonBlogger 