Blogs from Bangkok, Central Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 6

How time flies when you are having fun dealing with a pandemic and its aftermath. It's hard to believe that it's been three and a half years since our last post here and our last time in Bangkokwas a further year in the past. So much has changed since then but when we heard that Thailand had relaxed its entry requirements and that vaccinated travellers just needed their certificates, the lure was too strong to resist. We were in the UK on family business which made finding flights somewhat easier than it was from Spain. Direct flights with Thai Airways were reasonable enough and allowed us direct flights with a good level of comfort. Have to say though, the food was disappointing! On arrival in Bangkok we realised that we had made our first rookie mistake ... read more

Raw sewage. Carrion. Vomit custard. Rotting fish. Death. Someone compared it to eating ice cream in an outhouse. Anthony Bourdain said it was like “French kissing your dead grandmother,” and one 19thcentury journalist said, "To eat it seems to be the sacrifice of self-respect”. None of that matters. We have to do it. We have to eat durian. And we’re making the kid eat some too. Although allegedly banned on the sky train, we smelled it yesterday on the way home from school. It was only a hint, much fainter than the wall of stink that wafts through the grocery store, but definitely durian. There is no way to contain the stank. If it is cut, it smells; uncut, it smells; vacuum sealed, it smells. The prodigious funk is apparently an advantageous evolutionary adaptation. When the ... read more

People wash up on foreign shores for many reasons – opportunity, sanctuary, happenstance, adventure, love, vacation or in my case, a dependent spouse visa. While tourists come and go, ex-pats (ex-patriots) settle in and take root. In Thailand, most ex-pats are from neighboring countries. Some are permanent ‘migrant’ workers, some are bigwigs of international corporations, and some are things in between. Then there are the Westerners, who also run the gamut and number somewhere between a couple hundred thousand and a million. Over the years, a fair few of these have ended up with Thai wives. The malls are full of heavy jowled, thinning haired, sagging belly, tattooed, flip flopped old white men holding their high-heeled, smartly dressed, 15-year younger wives’ Louise Vuitton monogrammed purses while window shopping at the new Gucci store. While these fellows ... read more

Due to the pandemic, most travelers suffer from being forced to stay at home as a safety precaution. This pandemic caused a lot of canceled travel and stress to explorers and wanderers. Several years have passed and my spirit is still hoping that I can go back to Thailand again in the future. My first visit to the Kingdom was superb. I traveled a lot and was able to visit a lot of places and enjoy authentic Thai dishes. The second time around I was able to experience the Northernmost part and the neighboring countries.... read more

I didn't come to Bangkok with many specific sightseeing goals in mind. Rather, my goal in coming here was more abstract - I wanted to reconnect with the city that shaped and defined much of my life as a young adult. Bewarned that this blog entry is somewhat introspective. A Sort of Homecoming I landed in Bangkok on the evening of December 2nd. From the airport, I took the Airport Rail Link to my hotel, FX Metrolink Makkasan. I stayed in this hotel back in 2013, and I specifically chose it again because it is located next to three critical transport lines: the Airport Rail Link, Petchaburi MRT station on the blue line, and Asoke Pier, a stop on the Klong Saen Saep water taxi route. After checking in, I took the MRT to Terminal 21 ... read more