Remember that one guy I told you about? Yeah, that guy. That Arne guy.
Well, in the time since my last post (a little bit later than that, to be honest) I’ve been busy to meet up with him. In Thailand.
So, two nerdy guys from Europe in South-East-Asia. Here’s what happened.
The trip began by running through cold rain a bit to catch my taxi. A bit later I enjoyed the rain a even more by standing in it and waiting for the bus driver to open open the damn door to his motorized box with a roof. After I was totally drenched, he mercifully allowed us to enter (what a nice guy), and I squeezed myself into a seat and tried to resist that urge to breath. Bad habit, inhaling oxygen. Don’t try that, not even once.
I’m sure someone spent an unholy amount of money to design bus seats to be just that little bit too narrow to sit comfortably.
The following six and a half hours, I had time to contemplate about my very bad decision to choose a route that takes over 30 hours from my doorstep to Bangkok. The reasoning behind all that? Stupidly high prices for national flights in Germany. I guess people are selling their organs to pay for those.
After arriving in Frankfurt and finally inhaling that sweet sweet air, I settled in for yet a little more waiting. Another five hours (I’m not making that up!) later, I finally could get rid of my luggage and, you guessed it, play the waiting game for two more hours before I could board the plane. I got a lot of reading done that day.
The first flight took me from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi. Since I only transferred there, I can’t give you a detailed report. All I can say is, that it’s quite hot (duh!) and sandy (duh!) over there.
But from the 30.000 feet sand and heat look gorgeous! Seriously, look at Oman for example:
Anyway, I promised myself to visit that area before kicking the bucket.
After sitting around some more on the second plane (from Abu Dhabi to Bangkok), I finally arrived there at around six o’clock in the evening. I’m a tall guy and the economy seating neither on busses nor on planes care for that. Wedged between seats and unable to sleep for that long is a nearly perfect cure for jet lag, except you feel like the innards of your head has been transformed into jello.
The most obvious and immediate change upon arrival was the climate. Holy crap. Coming from a dark, relatively cold and rainy German November right into temperatures above 30°C and a lot of humidity is like being smashed in the face by an Asian Thai Boxer. BAM! We actually did see a Muay Thai turnament on day three at MBK Fight Night.
So, Bangkok. Arne was nice enough to pick me up at the airport. We took the Skytrain into the city and went for something to eat.
Food is abundant and fairly cheap. There are salesmen (and -women) offering street food all around the city and I guess some of it might even be edible if you want to discard of your bowels the next few days (at least if you’re used to European food). We mostly ate at restaurants. Those will charge you a whopping 4–6€ for a decent meal (incl. drinks). Food is fairly cheap. A decent meal in a restaurant comes with a price tag around 5–6€, including a drink.
Water and other beverages can be purchased at 7eleven stores which can be found at every corner. Beer’s a bit more expensive than in Germany, though.
At this point, I’d like to compare Bangkok to Berlin since Berlin is the biggest city in Germany (in terms of population). Bangkok is just about exactly like Berlin – except in every single way. For once, its public transport system actually works. The city is also very modern and it’s exceptionally clean for a city this big. There’s no trash to been seen even though there are no trash cans either. You can walk for mile with the empty water bottle you just purchased. In reality, you purchased one including the water, but you’ve already emptied it into yourself it five seconds later. Funny thing, it seemed to have come out of your pores just as fast. The human body is both fascinating and disgusting.
Of course, as you’d imagine, it’s very busy. People whizzing around on scooters, in cars, buses and small trucks everywhere. Bangkok seems to give a false impression of Thailand because the bike, as usual for Asia, is the standard mode of transport and most cars in Thailand are registered in Bangkok. Imagine a sweaty bathtub full of Toyotas scurrying around.
After my first impression of Bangkok had settled a bit, it was utterly destroyed by my first drive in a Tuk-Tuk. As it turns out, everything I’ve ever heard about those devilish machines seems to be true. The drivers don’t seem to be knowing what they’re doing or where they’re going. They also can’t decide whether they want to drive a tricycle or a bicycle.
If you can, get a Taxi instead but make sure to use the taximeter. The times we did, it was actually cheaper than the services provided by the maniacs on their two-stroked death machines.
The hotel room in Bangkok had a whopping size of around 7 square meters “big” and its main features were two mattresses on top of wooden pallets, some rather dirty linen and a bath whose wall didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling (still more privacy than in Germany these days with current data retention laws though).
All of this translates into either a special type of bonding or acute claustrophobia, depending on who you’re traveling with.
But it had air conditioning, which, amazingly, sometimes even seemed to work – the same goes for the WiFi. Internet is a bit like street food. It’s everywhere, but isn’t always good. Hotspots can be found everywhere in Bangkok. And I mean everywhere. Quite a nice difference to Germany, where you’re entering a judicial grey zone if you operate a free and open hotspot. Additionally to the hotspots, I also got myself a local SIM card. A prepaid card from the provider TRUE with 1.5 GB of data for a week costs around 10€, rather expensive for the region but well worth it. I had full LTE coverage 99% of the time, the exception being our hotel room in Koh Samet. There, I only had full HSDPA coverage.
Even on the bus from Bangkok to Ban Phe, right in the midst of the middle of nowhere, along the back roads south-east of Bangkok, I had 12 MBit/s upstream with LTE. In Germany, with my cable connection I’m paying around 1,5 fortunes for every month, I only get 6 MBit/s upstream. Same goes for the ferry off the cost on its way to Koh Samet.
For those interested, TRUE only seems to be providing IPv4 connectivity in a carrier-grade NAT.
To conclude, the Thais just seem to understand the importance of internet connections and they’re very good at securing coverage.
Bangkok is also friendly to your wallet. My flights to and from Bangkok had a bill of 489 Euro, which is pretty cheap if you consider 13 hours of flight to a land a fuckton of miles away. The hotel we stayed at was around 10€ per night – for the coffin we shared.
That’s it for now, I’ll keep you posted with updates. Right now, I’m in Koh Samet and enjoying the Hotel WiFi during the heat wave that’s called weather around here.
Heshsum 