🩸Blood, Sweat, and Hounds: 1st day in Thailand.

Welcome to a pure, unadulterated clusterfuck. The very first thing that slaps you right in the face after getting in from the airport is the grime embedded deep into the concrete, mould-covered walls, and piles of garbage heaped up with the chaotic grace of Asian bedlam. The sidewalks are trashed to hell, looking like a tank division just retreated through them.

And overhead—clusters, miles, entire black snake nests of tangled wires. Fuck, if you misstep by accident, this madness will strangle you right on the spot. Instead of air, there’s a scorching soup of dust, moped exhaust, and an insane city roar.

In my pocket—not a single baht, just a wad of dead American presidents. Google Maps coldly declares: " The nearest currency exchange is a kilometre away. Well, alright, let’s roll. After all, I comforted myself with the thought: “At least it’s warm here, unlike my native Siberia, where the sun is a myth.”

Barely a hundred meters in, the Siberian body, used to permafrost, suffered a fatal glitch. My skin literally started to boil. My body turned into an over-saturated foam sponge, erupting streams of water under pressure. My t-shirt and shorts were soaked through in minutes—dripping as if I’d just been yanked out of a washing machine that skipped the spin cycle. Jesus, what a fucking furnace.

Somehow making it to the exchange, I dumped the dollars, huddled into the first random patch of shade I could find, and tried to frantically catch my breath. And right then, real fear washed over me. Absolute zero in English, total zero in Thai. A reinforced-concrete internal barrier. My psyche completely locked down any attempt at interaction with the local Homo sapiens. And the surrounding mess only poured oil onto the fire of my panic.

A primitive plan emerged, straight out of a Neanderthal’s playbook: I’d just walk in somewhere, point a finger at a dish, and they’d show me the numbers on a calculator.

I dove into a roadside shack, where a local native immediately latched onto me—an old, mangy, scar-covered dog with a badly deformed jaw. The Thai staff, looking at the two of us, smiled welcomingly. You could read the classic phrase right off their faces: “Don’t piss yourself, farang, he doesn’t bite.” Yeah, fuck, right, sure.

Out of the entire menu, the only thing I could recognise was a chicken salad. When the plate was finally brought out, I made the biggest mistake of the day—I decided to show some Siberian benevolence. I pinched off a piece of chicken and extended it to this defective hound. The beast didn’t appreciate the pacifism: a lightning-fast lunge, snapping teeth—and the dog bit me hard on the hand, tearing my skin to fucking shreds and leaving a deep puncture wound with his single, last tooth sticking out of his wrecked jaw. Oh yeah, you bitch, totally doesn’t bite... 🤦‍♂️

After somehow washing the wound with technical water, I sat down to finish my first Thai meal, dealing with brutal discomfort from the bite and the whole environment. A fat red light went off in my brain: dogs are absolutely everywhere here. They’re sick, mangy, pissed off, and they’ve occupied every single meter of this space. Where the fuck did so many dogs come from?!

After that cursed meal, I headed back toward the hotel. My legs were buckling from exhaustion, and my brain was melting from the inability to digest this wild new world. I was literally dropping off my feet. And fuck, I did drop.

A couple of hundred meters from the lifesaving lobby, I felt something sink into my foot with a crunch and savage pain. I lost my balance, grabbed onto the wall, and doubled over in agony. Textbook shit: a rusty, razor-sharp piece of construction rebar sticking straight out of the asphalt. It pierced right through the sole of my flip-flop and ripped into the skin. The sensation was exactly like a dull kitchen knife being slammed full-force into a block of frozen butter.

Somehow, cursing out the entire street and leaving a bloody trail behind me, I crawled back to my room. Dumped my Siberian first-aid kit onto the bed. Drenched the cut in antiseptic, tightly bandaged the foot, and simultaneously slapped a band-aid over the dog bite on my hand.

I was starving, wildly exhausted, and completely crushed by my social muteness. But sitting inside four walls wasn’t an option. My famished stomach demanded action, so I decided to make a final march to the legendary “7/11” that all the travel bloggers hype up so sweetly.

And that step paid off one hundred percent. Operating strictly on sign language and primal instincts, I fished a bottle of local hooch out of the fridge for 36 baht. That was the best sip of my life. An ice-cold, sickeningly sweet, but unfuckingly effective liquid that instantly hit me like a freight train. The alcohol worked like a massive anaesthetic. All the horror, pain, and filth of this day smoothly melted away into a neon haze. Reaching the bed, I passed out cold.

The wakeup was gruesome. My foot was throbbing like hell, my hand was burning with live fire, and the thermometer clocked a spiking fever. What exactly was causing the fever—who the fuck knows. Maybe my body took a savage heatstroke, maybe some corpse bacteria from the roadside mutt’s mouth got into my bloodstream, or maybe the cut from the rusty rebar got infected. I felt so incredibly awful that I turned into a completely motionless vegetable under the freezing blast of the AC.

Right at that moment, they switched on a tropical apocalypse outside the window. Heavy, black clouds locked down the sky over the bay. I lay there, looking at this frighteningly beautiful, leaden sky, catching a pure, twisted ecstasy from what was happening. I am in Thailand right now. Surrounding me is a harsh, primaeval, brutal world that doesn’t forgive mistakes—and fuck, that is so cool!

Towards evening, choking down a heavy dose of aspirin, I finally managed to move my half-dead corpse. The foot was somehow cooperating. I went back down to that same “7/11” right under the hotel. This time I decided to go big: I grabbed three massive bottles of Chang beer, a sandwich, and unidentified fruits. Bought everything again without a single word, like a character in a silent movie.

Returning to my lair, I collapsed onto the mattress. The entire rest of the day passed in a state of feverish suspended animation—slowly destroying the Chang and digesting this insane, cinematic day. The alcohol snuffed out the pain again, my muscles relaxed, and looking out the window at the oncoming wall of black water, I fell into a deep, heavy, dreamless sleep.

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⚠️ WARNING / AUTHOR'S ANNOTATION

🛑 ATTENTION: This material contains explicit language, heavy profanity, and highly expressive terms.

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• 100% Original Copyright: All photographic materials in this publication are completely original and belong entirely to the author.

• The Gonzo Style: The narrative is delivered in the gonzo journalism genre. Explicit language, intense subjectivism, and a defiantly bold tone are the core highlights and artistic tools of this style—vital for conveying the full, unfiltered spectrum of the author's raw emotions.

• Absolute Realism: All events, no matter how wild, chaotic, or bizarre they might seem, actually happened to the author in real life.

• A Note to the Reader: Readers are strongly urged not to take the harsh tone, aggressive delivery, or rough style of the text to heart.