Gwyne is going to play hardball with this blog competition. She asked how many followers I had today, I said 7, she has 11. I asked about the friends to follower ratio - 292:7 vs 1,428:11, she said, "Nope, we're going by raw numbers." So c'mon, click that follow button. Just for another week or so.
This has been a very different Bangkok experience for me - my first trip here was in 1983, before the internet, McDonalds, Starbucks, BTS, and if you had a credit card, none of the places I stayed in took them - pretty much everything you'd associate with Western culture wasn't there when I first came. I used to stay in the Banglhampu area, Kao San Road specifically, which is a mecca for young travelers on the hippie trail. Back in the 70's, the three K's to be checked off were Kabul, Kathmandu and Kuta. Kao San Road replaced Kabul when the Soviet Union had the temerity to invade Afghanistan. I was able to drive past the old travelers area in Kabul, but there was no getting out of my vehicle, I was wearing a flak jacket being driven by Personal Security Detail with AK 47's on the way to a vocational school in Kabul. I can start to check that K off the list, but just can't finish the checkmark and feel good about it.
Way back in the day, there were three fairly comical characters on my first flight over in 1983 from LA to BKK - one guy going to India, one going to Nepal and myself, on a completely unplanned, untimed trip to unknown destinations. The fellow heading to India was headed to an Ashram and had a backpack full of shampoo. He heard shampoo was unavailable in India and I guess he really liked his hair to smell clean every day. There may have been no cell phones around in SE Asia and the Indian Subcontinent back in the day, but shampoo was most certainly plentiful. Fail. The next gentleman up was heading to Nepal to climb mountains. Ropes, harnesses, boots and icepicks adorned his backpack. Well, it turns out if you take a short trip around Kathmandu, every third store will be a mountain climber's delight - others who had come to hike and then sold all of their up to date gear on the cheap so they didn't have to lug it back. And then there's me. I'm frugal, which is one of the reasons I didn't choose the Europe backpacker's trip. That's for rich people. I was on the SE Asian trail for more than 1 1/2 years and over that time, I spent more than a dollar a night for a place to stay on two nights. And I'm still bitter about both of those nights. Every overnight bus or train trip was a night I didn't have to shell out baht, ringitt, rupiah, kyat or rupees for a bed to sleep in. But those two nights, where I was taken for big bucks, well, that was a big fail for me. The first night was on a trip from Bodhgaya, India to Varanasi. I walked into the first class train waiting lounge (after purchasing an unreserved 2nd class ticket) as if I belonged. I didn't exactly look like a first class passenger, with my backpack, beard and baggy pants and when they asked to see my ticket, I received a very disapproving head wag and a finger towards the door, out there with all the regular folk. So I splashed out and bought a first class ticket, for a relatively short trip. One of the better decisions I made, as we rolled into the train station at 1:00 am - the second class train was a mess, people getting off of the train through the windows - it was just too crowded to get on or off any other way. And I had my own seat in first class. Best 22 rupees I ever spent. I was ready to lay down on my closed cell foam mat and sleep in the train station with everyone else, but a tout found me, took me in his rickshaw to a place to sleep. $4. Ouch. I had been taken. I was somewhere in Varanasi in the middle of the night. It was stay in that guest house or find a place on the street to cozy up on. It did have hot water and I did drain the hot water tank the next morning (first hot water shower in months and months and months), but then I found myself another hovel the next day for 80 cents. The second time, there is no story, I was headed back to the U.S. and the cheapest flight was on Philippine Airlines so I stopped in Manila. There is not much of a travelers scene there (at least for travelers who are watching their pennies) and the best deal I could find was a $4 room - that $4 seemed to have wings as it flew out of my wallet. I guess the only story there was that I was on a plane the next day to Hawaii and there was a typhoon headed towards the Philippines. Every flight out of Manila was cancelled except mine, and I'm still here.
But today? I've moved from the young travelers side of town to the middle aged white guy side of town - each side has their plusses and minuses, but here's Gwyne, with her boots on on the top floor of the Bumrungrad Hospital Suites. It's more than $1/night, and it's worth it.
This has been a very different Bangkok experience for me - my first trip here was in 1983, before the internet, McDonalds, Starbucks, BTS, and if you had a credit card, none of the places I stayed in took them - pretty much everything you'd associate with Western culture wasn't there when I first came. I used to stay in the Banglhampu area, Kao San Road specifically, which is a mecca for young travelers on the hippie trail. Back in the 70's, the three K's to be checked off were Kabul, Kathmandu and Kuta. Kao San Road replaced Kabul when the Soviet Union had the temerity to invade Afghanistan. I was able to drive past the old travelers area in Kabul, but there was no getting out of my vehicle, I was wearing a flak jacket being driven by Personal Security Detail with AK 47's on the way to a vocational school in Kabul. I can start to check that K off the list, but just can't finish the checkmark and feel good about it.
Way back in the day, there were three fairly comical characters on my first flight over in 1983 from LA to BKK - one guy going to India, one going to Nepal and myself, on a completely unplanned, untimed trip to unknown destinations. The fellow heading to India was headed to an Ashram and had a backpack full of shampoo. He heard shampoo was unavailable in India and I guess he really liked his hair to smell clean every day. There may have been no cell phones around in SE Asia and the Indian Subcontinent back in the day, but shampoo was most certainly plentiful. Fail. The next gentleman up was heading to Nepal to climb mountains. Ropes, harnesses, boots and icepicks adorned his backpack. Well, it turns out if you take a short trip around Kathmandu, every third store will be a mountain climber's delight - others who had come to hike and then sold all of their up to date gear on the cheap so they didn't have to lug it back. And then there's me. I'm frugal, which is one of the reasons I didn't choose the Europe backpacker's trip. That's for rich people. I was on the SE Asian trail for more than 1 1/2 years and over that time, I spent more than a dollar a night for a place to stay on two nights. And I'm still bitter about both of those nights. Every overnight bus or train trip was a night I didn't have to shell out baht, ringitt, rupiah, kyat or rupees for a bed to sleep in. But those two nights, where I was taken for big bucks, well, that was a big fail for me. The first night was on a trip from Bodhgaya, India to Varanasi. I walked into the first class train waiting lounge (after purchasing an unreserved 2nd class ticket) as if I belonged. I didn't exactly look like a first class passenger, with my backpack, beard and baggy pants and when they asked to see my ticket, I received a very disapproving head wag and a finger towards the door, out there with all the regular folk. So I splashed out and bought a first class ticket, for a relatively short trip. One of the better decisions I made, as we rolled into the train station at 1:00 am - the second class train was a mess, people getting off of the train through the windows - it was just too crowded to get on or off any other way. And I had my own seat in first class. Best 22 rupees I ever spent. I was ready to lay down on my closed cell foam mat and sleep in the train station with everyone else, but a tout found me, took me in his rickshaw to a place to sleep. $4. Ouch. I had been taken. I was somewhere in Varanasi in the middle of the night. It was stay in that guest house or find a place on the street to cozy up on. It did have hot water and I did drain the hot water tank the next morning (first hot water shower in months and months and months), but then I found myself another hovel the next day for 80 cents. The second time, there is no story, I was headed back to the U.S. and the cheapest flight was on Philippine Airlines so I stopped in Manila. There is not much of a travelers scene there (at least for travelers who are watching their pennies) and the best deal I could find was a $4 room - that $4 seemed to have wings as it flew out of my wallet. I guess the only story there was that I was on a plane the next day to Hawaii and there was a typhoon headed towards the Philippines. Every flight out of Manila was cancelled except mine, and I'm still here.
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