in Bangkok

Greetings from Thailand! (or, in Thai, hello is "Saw wat dee", the only thing I can say so far)...

Not too much has happened between leaving Hawaii two days ago and getting here, other than sitting on a plane pretty much and eating a lot of airplane food. The one bit of excitement was when I got to Tokyo, and they wouldn't change US dollars into Thai baht. No problem, I could probably do it during my layover in Taipei, Taiwan which is closer to Thailand. Well, I could have except that the currency exchange desk closed at the weird time of 2:50 pm, and I got in there at around 5 in the evening. Considering that, I figured I wouldn't be able to change money in the Bangkok airport either, since I was flying in at 1am. I had 5 hours there in Taipei to think about it, and thought if I didn't come up with a solution then perhaps as a last resort I could find another traveler with baht who would exchange a small amount for me, since all I really needed was enough to get me from the airport to my hotel. So after thinking about it I realized the obvious solution was that there would probably be 24-hour atm machines in Bangkok where I could withdraw money (you can withdraw directly out of your checking account, but then it converts it into the local currency at a fair rate). So just to make sure, I went onto a traveler's website (at least there was free internet access in Taipei) and posted a question asking if anyone knew for sure that there would be atms there open at 2 am. I checked back an hour later and two people had responded, both saying that not only would there be plenty of atms available but that the exchange desks would also be open. And sure enough when I got there they were, so I exchanged the last of my dollars (on hand, I mean, I'll be using the atms from now on). Obviously the Thais are a little more of night owls than the Taiwanese.

So then I got a taxi to my hotel, which I'd reserved a while ago for two nights to have the chance to recover for a day, which I definitely needed. I was able to print out directions to the hotel in Thai off the hotel's website beforehand, which was a good thing because even with it he had a bit of a hard time finding it. It's roughly near the airport but a little out in the middle of nowhere, it was a pretty uninteresting drive through a sort of an industrial business zone to get here, going the opposite direction from Bangkok. But it was highly recommended online, and I'm guessing the out of the way location is why it's really cheap for being a nice place with really clean rooms and a pool. My room has a tiny balcony, private bathroom and TV, and it's 250 baht, which is about $7.50/night. And they had cheaper rooms for about $5 but none were available. If this same hotel were more centrally located I'm sure it would be more like $20-30 at least, since Bangkok is a little more expensive than other areas of Thailand. If you want to check out a couple of photos their website is: http://www.bangpli.com/sananwan.htm.

So today I'm not doing much of anything, especially since based on the drive last night it didn't look like there was anything worthwhile to check out within a short walk from here. It's overcast and warm but not hot (I think about 80 f) so I may not even make it into the pool today. But tomorrow I'll being moving on way or another, since there isn't too much point in staying here to see Bangkok because you'd use up a lot of time, and all the money you saved, just getting into the city. But I'm probably not even going to Bangkok from here anyway. The islands that I want to go to first are east of Bangkok, and I'm on the eastern edge of the city, so I don't have to deal with the city in the process of getting there from here. Reading through my guidebook Bangkok sounds really interesting and there's lots of great stuff to see, but I'm thinking I'll wait until a little later in my trip when I'm more in the mood to spend 3 or 4 days in the city. So probably what I'll end up doing is taking a 5-6 hour bus ride to the small town of Trat, which is close to Cambodia. It sounds worth spending a few days in, then from there it's a short bus ride to a pier, from which boats take about 2-3 hours to go to the island of Ko Mak, which is where I settled on first, an island of only about 12 square miles that sounds pretty mellow, with budget accomodations and good beaches, swimming and snorkelling. Then from there I'll probably go to the nearby larger island of Ko Kood, which has a lot of waterfalls and hiking and stuff in the interior, but it sounds like accomodations are a little spendier, partly just because it's not very developed and has catered more to package tourists. So I'll have to find out a little better what the budget options are there. Then from that area I'll probably either head to see the temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or else go back to Bangkok, then go north from there and make way up to the northern border and then go check out Laos. It'll certainly depend a bit on what I hear about in the meantime and whoever I might meet up with along the way...