Shouzer

I can’t sleep because of the jet lag that I thought I was over. I’m killing time by posting the second installment of my travel diary. This one is more a record of what was going on. The first was me trying to come up with a way to entertain myself on a long, boring flight.

5-30-07 Bangkok

The second flight was far better than the first. I was exhausted by the end of the first flight, but I was too comfortable to fall asleep. Fortunately, this was not a problem during the second. Once again, I awoke at the top of the plane’s climb to a long, rambling speech in Japanese. I had drooled on myself in that short, 10 minute nap. I had the whole 4 seat row to myself for most of the flight, so I stretched out. I slept most of the way there, only stopping to eat and watch Freedom Writers, which was excellent.

My first day in Bangkok was fairly productive. I picked out an apartment after searching most of the day. I was unable to find one of the places I tried to walk to, and in the end, I just went with one of the places the school recommended. It seemed to offer the best value for money.

I was unprepared for how sprawled out Bangkok is. I had been told this, but it is far more extreme than I had realized. Apparently, locals use motorcycle taxis to get around. I tried at one point, but the driver thought I was asking for directions. I spent most of the day walking instead. Public transportation is severely lacking here. The skytrain does not go into the riverfront/tourist areas. I am not even sure if it goes downtown. I haven’t made it out of the suburb where the school is yet. Also, there is no unlimited travel option; it is all pay per trip. This honestly bothers me. It means that I cannot just hop on the train and go down to visit the tourist areas whenever I feel like it. I guess I’ll have to take a taxi for part of the journey if I want to go there. That will probably prohibit me from going there as often as I would like. I really expected a well developed public transit system here, but that is not the case.

On the up side, the motorcycle taxis are very cheap from what I’m told. They cost about 15 baht to get from the main roads to the side roads you desire, which I guess is better than walking 30 minutes.

I think I’m going to have to invest some time in figuring out the bus system. It, too, is confusing because there are multiple kinds of buses, most likely with many different routes. I guess the best option is to find which buses travel near my apartment and use those.

Food is cheap, and it is everywhere. You can hardly walk down the sidewalks on the main streets because of all the sidewalk vendors. I have yet to eat from one of the stalls, but the food smelled magnificent. I ate today in the food court at the Tesco, and it was pretty superb, especially considering it cost my about $0.60.

I have experienced a range of emotions today from overwhelmed to excited, amazed, tired, irritated, and satisfied. At first, I loved it here because of how completely foreign it is to me, but the transportation thing has gotten me down a bit. I guess I’m just going to have to live like a local and use the motorcycle taxis despite the fact I hate paying for taxis in general. The result will be that transportation costs will be higher than I anticipated, but I’m just going to have to live with it.