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An Unexpected Road
It was a new city and she felt really scared; especially because her parents had warned her about being pickpocketed. Ella started getting to know Bangkok better and judge it by herself but she couldn’t avoid feeling lonely for weeks before her best friends arrived in town.
Her expectations of the city were quite good compared to what she expected. People helped her out several times when she needed to get to a specific address and she had actually never felt real danger as she avoided midnight journeys by herself.
It was Friday and she had been waiting anxiously for this moment. Her friends from Spain had planned this trip for several months so the three of them could spend some time together and enjoy most of Bangkok’s tourist places. Ella went to the airport to pick them up and Anna and Elisa hugged her firmly. Ella couldn’t avoid the tears running through her face. She had been having excellent moments but she felt lonely and company was what she needed the most.
They headed out to the apartment where they were having an excellent evening. As any foreigner visitor, partying or looking for new adventures felt as one of the main goals, so they wanted to look for a plan that involved going out to a nightclub so they headed out to this zone in Bangkok called “Hua Hin”.
Ella had previously gone there with a group of friends from Spain and Italy to taste the best Asian food in town, so, she wanted Anna and Elisa to have a taste as well. Suddenly, the night had turned pretty dangerous as the streets were looking really dark and lonely, so they decided to stop right in front of an Italian restaurant and have, instead, a nice slice of pizza and go back home, as it was already 2 am in the morning.
They stopped at the corner of the street to eat a delicious pizza with cheese and mushrooms. Despite all this, they were having a really good time after those glasses of wine they had had before at the apartment; so now, they wanted to go back home as they knew the nocturne life in Bangkok was not as safe as in Spain and distances were pretty longer.
They stepped at the first stop of the bus they found. Ella remembered taking that bus the last time she went there so she felt pretty sure it was going to take them back home.
Time went by really slowly. There were lots of young people looking drunk and sleeping in the bus. The smell was extremely disgusting that Ella and her friends had to grab their scarfs and cover their noses so they couldn’t smell the vomit next to them.
Anna and Elisa sat separately from Ella. Ella sat behind them beside an old woman who stared intensely at her. She started murmuring things impossible to understand. Ella’s friends, sitting in the front seats, looked at her asking what she was saying. Ella could not respond. She started feeling petrified and unable to move. Her body was not responding to her brain’s instructions until the bus stopped abruptly making her hit her head. She felt as if it were no longer attached to her body; it was spinning around and falling from one side to another trying to maintain stability but her eyes were closing, so indeed, she fell asleep.
Several minutes after, Ella woke up realizing she was having a bad dream, possibly, after all those glasses of wine she had had before. Her friends were also asleep. She looked through the window and saw this places she had never seen before. She now needed to stay awake and alert in case they needed to get off the bus soon.
She looked around the bus and the only ones remaining were the three of them and another guy. He approached them and asked them for their destination. Ella innocently answered “Bangsaen”. He laughed out loud saying, “We are in Pattaya! This is the sea! This is the last stop of the bus.”
“Oh my God.” That was the only thing going through Ella’s mind. She and her friends looked at each other with a face of amazement, fear, surprise and all the feelings altogether in just one look. They stepped out of the bus and looked around. A deserted beach and a cold night.
