How do you meet new people in Bangkok?

This is a question that we’ve both struggled with a little bit. Not just for Bangkok, but any new place really. Part of the answer is in going to classes. Find activities that facilitate you being able to meet others with similar interests. It’s part of how I met my best friend in Chicago - through aerial class. Well, aerial classes here have yet to yield much for me yet, but maybe they will eventually. Muy Thai classes have worked reasonably well for Justin so far. I thought taking Thai lessons would work - you know, meet others in the city that are trying to learn this crazy hard language and are probably new. Turns out the Thai lessons that I was able to sign up for are just private lessons, so no luck there.

Well, today I tried something new. There’s this app called Time Left that kind of took over Europe and has now spread all. Over. Something like 56 cities the website says. Essentially the gist is this - you sign up for a small fee, fill out a survey (basically a minor personality test and some preferences) and then you get paired with a small group of others to have dinner with. So tonight I met 7 other complete strangers and had dinner with them. A pretty weird idea, but it was actually quite fun. It helped that there were those in the group that were quite outgoing and warm, so it helped a lot with the reservations I had showing up. The table rundown was this:

• A teacher from South Africa (I actually thought was British at first) who saw a posting for a teacher in Bangkok at an international school, applied, and moved all within the span of about two weeks. That was ten years ago!
• An airline worker from Vietnam who was all about this and was beyond willing to give recommendations for different places so you could have the best experience.
• A super sweet Thai woman who just started selling stuff on Etsy. She says she’s Thai but she’s not actually Thai because she doesn’t like heat, spicy food, or rice!
• A man from LA who is literally living my dream - visiting a place until he gets tired of it then moving on to the next spot that a cheap flight can take him. I feel like in another life we could be really good friends.
• A French man from Paris who is the co-founder of a tech startup and decided he wanted to do it from Bangkok.
• A Emerati man now working in hospitality and seeing what Bangkok has to teach him about it.
• A Thai woman who is an app UI/UX developer, but also has been a co-host for ThaiPod101 - a podcast I just started listening to to help me learn Thai!

We met up at the restaurant (which was decent enough) and strangely enough, it was not awkward. Great conversation, very little lull in the conversation. Then we went to the bar just around the corner that the app sends you details for where all the Time Left folks show up and we got to hang out with our group some more. It was really nice! Did I meet my new BFF? Who’s to say? Most of them were people I could see myself being friends with, but I wouldn’t say we hit it off so well that we were rushing to make plans with one another. I do hope I get to see them again. I figure I’ll give the app a few more goes, so we’ll see what happens!