Self Employed Pharmacist

A perk of solo traveling is the people you meet along the way. It's the fun part and one of the reasons that I chose to do this trip alone. I wanted to meet and interact with all different types of people and, eventually, become more comfortable in these interactions. A dream of mine is that in ten years, I can call upon some of these people I meet during this trip and have lunch in Barcelona to catch up and continue to swap more stories. But I need to meet some more people before this all happens.

If you are someone I have met along the trip and think a story is about you. It most likely is.

On my fifth and last night in Bangkok, after a few delays and sunset cruises, I had seen enough people come and go from the hostel I was staying at to get an understanding of the travelers in Bangkok. It is a good mix of people just starting their trip or returning to their lives the following day. Being quite curious about what people thought of all the travels that I have only been able to read about, I learned the basic questions everyone must ask.

"Where have you been?" "How did you like it" "Anywhere I need to see."

Everyone asks these questions but with great purpose. It is easy to connect and gain valuable opinions you cannot find elsewhere. This is my method of researching most everything on my trip. I admit that I should have researched visas needed to travel, but that will be the pressing issue in about two months.

Another way that I discovered meeting people was to buy into the idea that you will never see these people ever again; with that, you can say and question anything with minimal consequences. I personally wanted to create more meaningful connections, but I soon met people who exercised the idea of free will, which is also called lying.

Sitting with a group of, you guessed it, dutch people, one man took this route to the fullest. Asking all sorts of purposefully mind-challenging questions, any of which are taken straight from your basic 26-year-old long-form podcast. Just picking the brains of the drunk strangers around him. Testing morality and life as we know it. I was plenty entertained but could have been more engaged until we started discussing jobs and employment. This man was from London and wanted the group to guess what he did for a living, which caused him to end up in Bangkok for a long holiday. A few guesses were thrown around until I took my crack at it.

"Are you a Chemist?" I guessed.

This guess got closest and got the shrug of approval. But what he followed up with made me question this man as he persisted in the earlier conversations.

"I work in pharmaceuticals; I can take time off because there will always be a job for me when I return to London. And I work for myself."

I paused to figure out how you could be a remote pharmacist. Which I realized you cannot.

He's just a drug dealer, But that's a really good name for a drug dealer.