Welcome to South East Asia!
Trip Start
Sep 20, 2004
1
76
89
Trip End
Mar 30, 2005
Bangkok,
Thailand
Thursday, February 17, 2005
After landing and getting the bags, Lisa and I decided to have a heated debate about where to stay. Well, actually it was the night before. From Bangkok, we could have booked an amazing 4+ Star place with great review for $32 (my vote). But Lisa wanted to try one of the places in the book ('small but clean rooms, hot water shower'...your typical mid level backpacker place for $14). Now granted, this is double the price but come on...big, modern high-spec hotel vs small but clean rooms...hmmm.
Anyway, I lost and we decided to go with more reasonable. From the airport, we called the place in the book and (naturally) because they are listed in Lonely Planet, they had jacked their prices up. Now we know this is normal -- almost all of them do. But this was nearly double (read not too far off $32 4 Star -- super amazing place with free seafood buffets, slippers and terrycloth kiss-your-butt bathrobes for all).
Grump.
I am fairly sure that I wasn't very helpful deciding if we should book there, or go into town and sort it out, or just sit there and sulk. I was all for sulking.
Shared a cab into town and figured that we would just pick an area and sort it out in the city. We wanted to go to a certain part of town but the cab driver dropped us off in Khao San Road. This is the totally backpacker cheap and kinda skanky area. Oh well, fine.
Stayed in a cheap hotel on Khao San Road that was great and we even loved the area. Amazing. Funny how we still, five months into it, get nervous about where to stay in big cities!
We really liked Bangkok ... great food, fun markets, and nice palace and temple of two. You can really see why backpackers love to come to Thailand. The people are great, it is SUPER easy to travel and get around here. Loads of travelers, lots of people to share travel stories with and it's nice and warm!
-B
