Bangkok: Third Time is a Charm
The last time I posted about Bangkok I was not a happy glamper.
The last time I posted about Bangkok I was not a happy glamper.
G and I have the same fearful vision in our heads: we get on these bikes, are taken for a ride and I am kidnapped, disappearing into Bangkok forever. Let’s have a word about Bangkok. Living on Khao San Road is really cheap but kind of a pain in the rear. It’s not connected to the metro lines, forcing you to go by tuk-tuk or taxi and god willing I will never have to take another tuk-tuk. It’s 4:30 on concert day and we decide that we should get going. We’d like to sit at a restaurant, food stand, whatever and have dinner and beers before the show. We figure we will take a taxi, plus rush hour on a Friday evening is just about to start. Fretfully we approach the line of taxis. We engage one and then crap, G forgot the 7/11 Gaga receipt. Run back to hostel and fetch it. Back to the taxi line. The taxi actually waited for us. 300 baht and he will take us there. We want the …
I’m backdating this entry half a week due to the fact that I’m not toting my laptop and so I can’t write in real time. We spent a couple of nights just off Khao San Road in a busy guesthouse, far enough from the noise but close enough to the action to stumble to. Double room with A/C, fan, basic amenities and clean enough for $15/night. We love Thailand already. It wasn’t long before the humidity had us taking afternoon siestas and primarily functioning after dusk. Given the 40 degree heat and near total humidity, we needed to make any beach our heading, ASAP. Quite frankly, we weren’t able to enjoy Bangkok for this reason. May as well head elsewhere, we will have plenty opportunity to return. We booked an overnight bus and ferry to Koh Samui, an island in the South. That evening we had a very social night, meeting tons of other travellers. Among the nine of us in our crew, was a German girl who mentioned that she had rented a bungalow …
I suspect that you realize by now that between travels, this blog is largely dormant. After a year and a half hiatus this entry does indeed mark an impending trip. Yesterday tickets were booked for a five month journey through South East Asia, for the second time. Allow me to explain. In February 2010 G & I jumped on a $550 CAD one way ticket to Bangkok, by way of a 10 day stop in Beijing. Dated for 11/10/11 we had every intent of leaving snowy northern British Columbia and never returning (read: move to Vancouver and travel, not go-to-Asia-and-never-come-back). However, by early summer G had a work opportunity that he could not resist capitalizing on, and as luck would have it the summer courses that represented my final BComm credits were cancelled due to low enrolment. So the tickets were refunded (FYI: Air China charge of $100.00) and I begrudgingly accepted the fact that another winter would be spent in the north. We decided that we would reschedule our departure date for Spring 2012. Fall …