Living in Bangkok

We’ve been in our AirBnB for about 10 days now.  I am still struggling with my cough and the heat and humidity are rough.  I knew the heat would be difficult for me and it is.  While I don’t relish living in this type of heat for months at a time, in a way it is probably a good thing since we don’t have to rush around every single day and see all the things in a short amount of time.

We have been taking seeing the sights slower than we usually do, in great part because of my cough.  While I have recovered mostly from the flu (which Blaise never got), that cough lingers and is exacerbated by exertion.

What We Have Seen

The Parks

We have hit the 2 major parks in Bangkok: Lumphini and Benchakitti.  There is always something a bit special about enjoying a beautiful park in the midst of the chaos of a big city.  Blaise had seen lots of YouTube videos of both parks so he was excited to see them in person.  Of the two, we preferred Lumphini.

Benchakitti seemed to be mostly a walkway around a manmade lake.  Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful and the flowers added to the beauty.  But Lumphini seemed a bit more sprawling with lots to see.  There we watched kids playing and people meditating and doing Tai Chi.  There were little ponds and lakes, walkways and trails.  I just liked the feel better.

Benchakitti Park (Didn't post these on Facebook so you get Benchakitti pictures and not Lumphini)

Blaise in the Benchakitti Dog Park, with no dog

Us at Benchakitti Park - Yes, I was hot!

Chinatown

Yesterday, we traveled to Chinatown.  I guess it was not our thing.  It is a destination here.  When you google things to do in Bangkok, it shows up on every list.  It is different than some other parts of Bangkok with lots going on, lots of shoe stores and stores with kitschy stuff from China.  But when you are traveling for 8 months and have most of those months ahead of you, shopping and buying things is not something you do.

The great thing about visiting Chinatown is we got to revisit the Chao Phraya River, taking a tourist boat to get there.  We road past our most-favored Peninsula hotel and remembered the days of pampering and relaxation there, only ten days prior. Blaise was particularly excited to be back on the river.  We even saw our little Peninsula boats.

Shopping Malls

The shopping malls here are next level.  While the shopping mall is nearly dead in the U.S., or at least in Texas, they are certainly alive and well here.  And they are pretty smart about it.  It seems most major malls are right next to or connected directly to a BTS station.

Because of the rain, we have visited a couple of them:  Terminal 21 and Siam Center (not to be confused with the Icon Siam (the one down the river from The Peninsula Hotel).

Terminal 21 was more interesting than the others.  Each level was fashioned after a different city of the world - Paris, London, Istanbul, San Francisco.  San Francisco was by far the coolest with a Golden Gate Bridge and a cable car with cable car tracks on the floor.

Golden Gate Bridge in the Terminal 21 mall (If you look closely, you can even see cars on the bridge)

Golden Gate Bridge in the Terminal 21 mall

Cable car in Terminal 21 mall

The view from the window in the ladies room at the Terminal 21 mall.

Travel Around Bangkok

We mostly use our feet and public transport to get around Bangkok.  We have taken Grab, from time to time.  Grab is their version of Uber.

They have two train systems: the BTS and the MRT.  The BTS is the elevated train system and the MRT is the subway.  So far, we have only had the opportunity to use the BTS.  We are a 17-minute walk (according to Google Maps) from the closest train station (On Nut).

The condo complex we are staying in has a shuttle bus to the BTS station for 15 baht (about 50 cents) one way.  It might also be called the shutter bus, it depends on if you believe the sign or the tickets you buy to ride the bus.  The bus leaves every 30 minutes for the BTS station.  However, for some reason, before 2 PM, it is only at the top of the hour and the bottom of the hour IF they have riders.  So if you want them to pick you up FROM the BTS station to take you back to the condo before 2 PM, you have to call them.  BUT they don’t have a WhatsApp number.  We never get SIM chips so unless we are on wifi, we can’t call them without incurring exorbitant international calling rates.  Therefore, we usually take the shuttle to the BTS station and then walk back from it when we return.  We try to do everything in the morning before the heat really takes over in the afternoon.

The shuttle bus is not what you picture when you think of bus.  It is a truck with open-air seating in the back.  Don’t picture a tuk tuk because it is not small like a tuk tuk.

Shutter bus?

Or Shuttle bus?

The BTS stations are clean and very well organized.  My favorite thing about the BTS trains is they are nice and cool and it doesn’t matter how many people are on the train, they are never hot.  I have never once overheated in a train here; a far cry from the Tokyo to Osaka debacle.  Blaise complains that they are too cold.  I would much rather they be too cold than too warm because once you walk off the train, you are immediately assaulted with hot muggy air!

Hopefully we will have the opportunity to ride the MRT before we leave.  Thus far, no trip we have taken in Bangkok has required the subway.  However, I looked into going to their big flower market and it requires the BTS and the MRT to get there.

The bus system here is call the BRT.  We are going to avoid the buses here after observing them.  It is not that we have an aversion to buses - we take them in lots of cities. We rode them extensively in Rome.  The buses here, however, seem a bit inconsistent in their quality.  Some are very modern and appear air conditioned, while others appear barely operational.  Like they are going to break down any minute.  Since we don’t know which version of the buses we are going to get, we avoid the options in Google maps that require bus rides, even if it means walking farther. We also see very few people on buses.  I don’t think people need to ride buses with all the tuk tuks and how reasonable the Grab prices are.

The AirBnB

Our AirBnB complex is nice.  Not super fancy, but safe and clean with a gym and swimming pool.

What we have learned (when I say we, I really mean Blaise with his expert research skills), is that the closer your AirBnB is to a BTS station, the more expensive it is.  A 17-minute walk to the BTS means a cheaper AirBnB than one right next to it.  Since they have the shuttle to the station, the condo being farther away from the BTS is not really that important.  

We are on the 5th floor of the building.  You have to use your key card to get into parking lot, whether you walk in or drive in.  You have to use your key card to get into the building and then when you get in the elevator, you can’t even ride to your floor without scanning your key card before you hit the button for your floor, and every person in the elevator must use their key card to get to their floor.

We are on the end of the hallway so we have more windows than other condos - windows on two sides of the apartment.  We also have a balcony but the balcony is more functional than some place to hang out and enjoy the view.  The balcony has the washer on it and the clothes drying rack, thus functional.

The view is really from the window in our living room which over looks the S1 Snooker club, a nail salon, hair salon, coffee hut, and where they dispatch the Grab motorcycles to pick up people.  Grab isn’t just cars like Uber; you can use a Grab motorcycle driver to take you where you want to go. It’s cheaper than the cars so lots of people take them.

View from our condo

I got my pedicure at the nail salon and Blaise gets iced coffee from the hut everyday and even brings me a Thai iced tea.  He gets a large and I get a small for 65 baht ($2.00) total.

Nail salon

Blaise's coffee hut

Further down the road is some tennis courts.

We have learned that the Thai people love their tennis and they love to Snook.  Snook is probably not the proper verb for people who play Snooker, but I like it so I’m going with it.

The VERY busy Snooker club

We have settled into a nice routine, exploring in the mornings and spending the afternoons and/or evenings doing laundry, reading, or watching the prior seasons of The Diplomat before we start the new season (since Blaise hasn’t ever watched a single episode before now).

Weather

This is the rainy season but we did not get any rain until last Wednesday.  Since then it has rained every day, usually in the afternoon and at night, so we try to be home by 2 PM which works out well since it gets so hot and muggy in the afternoon.

The other night, it rained so much, the street in front of the Snooker Club looked like a river - with a flow.  There must have been at least 6 inches of water, likely more. When we woke up the next morning, while the street was wet, there was no indication it had been a river just hours before that.

Food

The price of food is all over the map.

If you want to eat street food, you can eat cheap cheap cheap.  The day we did laundry while we were staying at the Peninsula, we passed a street food vendor and the smell was awful for Blaise and me.  It really turned us both off of street food and then I started thinking about the cleanliness of the vendors and then my bout of Montezuma's Revenge when in Greece in the spring.  That one is still fresh in my mind. I haven’t dared to touch the street food as of yet.  

Most of the malls and even the grocery store have street vendor-type food areas.  It is almost as inexpensive as the street vendors, but they seem cleaner.  We’ve eaten at those areas in the malls several times.

If you eat at a restaurant restaurant, the prices range from slightly more than the street vendors to much more costly.

What I have discovered is I can only eat so much Thai food.  There is a small subset of Thai food I enjoy eating on a regular basis - pad Thai, dumplings, and some (but not all) meat and rice dishes.  I hate to admit it, but I think I have the palate of a 10-year-old.

While I do not like Pizza Hut at home, I have eaten there twice since we have been at the AirBnB. I just can’t eat Thai food every day.

Bangkok also has an abundance of McDonalds, KFCs, and Burger Kings. I haven’t eaten at any of those yet, but I feel that I will.

There is a 7-11 on practically every corner.  In the 17-minute walk to the train station, we pass 4 7-11s.  People go there all the time for food.  The food there is actually pretty cheap. I get bananas and yogurt there just about every other day.

Right by the BTS station is a Lotus grocery store.  You can get just about anything there.  It reminds me of the Disney Kroger by our house at home.  (Disney Kroger name attributed to Dana.) Other than the 7-11s and the grocery store in the Icon Siam mall, that Lotus is the only grocery store I’ve seen.

Blaise made the first visit to the Lotus by himself on the first day we got to the AirBnB since I was still feeling badly.  One of the things he got was frozen “chicken tendons.”  (Again, the palate of a 10-year-old) Of course, our thought was, it was like the “shutter bus” - they just got the wrong English word.  They have to be chicken “tenders.” The other day, I heated some up and discovered they really are chicken tendons.  They were gross.  Blaise and I were pulling all kinds of gristle and cartilage out of our mouths. They were icky so we tossed them.

The Queen Mother

On October 24, the Queen Mother passed away at 94.  The country is in mourning.  There are little memorials all over the city, including our condo’s entryway.

One of the Queen Mother memorials. May she rest in peace.

It also appears that businesses are required to post the same announcement/statement. They are everywhere, including the screen in our elevator at the condo.

Translation of the notice

What the notice looks like.  The top part is the same everywhere.

She lays in state through November 9 at the palace so we are steering clear of the palace until after that out of respect.  It wouldn’t be right for us to show up for a tour of the palace while the country is saying goodbye to the Queen Mother.  Blaise read that the country will have a 1-year mourning period.  That is a long time to mourn. But she is royalty.

Other Observations

One of the things we have noticed is that there are no street-sweeper machines.  It seems Bangkok actually pays people to literally sweep the streets with brooms.  Not push brooms or the brooms that we are familiar with.  The Thai brooms are made of some sort of straw of varying lengths - the end of the straw is not a straight line.  

The brooms they use to sweep the streets and really everywhere.

Also, someone from the Snooker club sweeps their parking lot every day and the coffee lady sweeps around her coffee hut daily.

They even start sweeping after it rains, sweeping the water into the drains so there are no standing puddles.  They do this on the streets and in parking lots.

Everyone seems to take great pride in whatever establishment they own, making sure the outside is clean and free of trash and water.

The trains are also mostly quiet.  Sometimes they get noisier than other times, but only on the weekends, it seems.  You also cannot eat and drink on the trains so that is probably one reason they are so clean.

Closing

We leave on the 14th for Chiang Mai.  I will try to write once more before we leave Bangkok.