Silom Road, Cafe World
Bangkok, Silom - back on the road
Now can write in earnest. Doesn't feel like much of a travel blog when the "from a cafe" is an upper west side Starbucks, or my living room. Even this cafe - World Cafe in Bangkok - is a little swish but, will spiral down soon enough. A last go at emails with milk coffee and AC and cinnamon buns.
Arrived late last night - 1am - and hadn't booked hotel so spent another mess of minutes finding a place on Silom for around $50. Tower Inn Hotel, me and the western men found it. They were milling around front desk when I checked in at 2. All the westerners in the city a bit edgy this weekend - found this out via eavesdropping this morning. It's Sunday in Bangkok and there's no liquor to be had till elections wrap. India did the same thing I recall, painful laying in of bottles and conspiring with friends to pass the evenings in-house. What if US adopted the same measures? Would there have been more blue states had we all been sober? the opposite?
"Bloody dry Bangkok, mate," says Aussie up too early across from me, "can you believe it, bloody dry."
No big things to report from journey so far. Eliminating Sofia in the route to India has made this a relatively tame itinerary - JAL from JFK to Tokyo, three hours in Narita (three dull hours, my gate in the western ghetto of departure gates - Newark across, Houston at mine before Bangkok - so people watching not exactly foreign), then 6 more hours on JAL to here. A Thai teen group who'd been at Tokyo Disney on my plane, and all around my seat. They stayed up the whole ride and traded pimply tales, Mickey ears on the head of one, stuffed Snoopy in lap of another. Remarkably unattractive group as a whole on my plane, like getting onto a 2 or 3 one morning in Manhattan and happening to find yourself in a car full of manhattan's ugliest. Or maybe it's no sleep.
Very few signs or mentions of the tsunami. Had thought it would be more NYC post 9/11. A poster with a photo of the king's son as you come off the expressway to Silom, a CARE donation box at the cash register in 7/11. Otherwise, nothing at all.
Will be in Calcutta late this afternoon, and so to begin the India portion of the journey.
Missing R (sipping ginger tea and watching Killing Fields on his couch) and friends.
Love from bangkok,
C
Now can write in earnest. Doesn't feel like much of a travel blog when the "from a cafe" is an upper west side Starbucks, or my living room. Even this cafe - World Cafe in Bangkok - is a little swish but, will spiral down soon enough. A last go at emails with milk coffee and AC and cinnamon buns.
Arrived late last night - 1am - and hadn't booked hotel so spent another mess of minutes finding a place on Silom for around $50. Tower Inn Hotel, me and the western men found it. They were milling around front desk when I checked in at 2. All the westerners in the city a bit edgy this weekend - found this out via eavesdropping this morning. It's Sunday in Bangkok and there's no liquor to be had till elections wrap. India did the same thing I recall, painful laying in of bottles and conspiring with friends to pass the evenings in-house. What if US adopted the same measures? Would there have been more blue states had we all been sober? the opposite?
"Bloody dry Bangkok, mate," says Aussie up too early across from me, "can you believe it, bloody dry."
No big things to report from journey so far. Eliminating Sofia in the route to India has made this a relatively tame itinerary - JAL from JFK to Tokyo, three hours in Narita (three dull hours, my gate in the western ghetto of departure gates - Newark across, Houston at mine before Bangkok - so people watching not exactly foreign), then 6 more hours on JAL to here. A Thai teen group who'd been at Tokyo Disney on my plane, and all around my seat. They stayed up the whole ride and traded pimply tales, Mickey ears on the head of one, stuffed Snoopy in lap of another. Remarkably unattractive group as a whole on my plane, like getting onto a 2 or 3 one morning in Manhattan and happening to find yourself in a car full of manhattan's ugliest. Or maybe it's no sleep.
Very few signs or mentions of the tsunami. Had thought it would be more NYC post 9/11. A poster with a photo of the king's son as you come off the expressway to Silom, a CARE donation box at the cash register in 7/11. Otherwise, nothing at all.
Will be in Calcutta late this afternoon, and so to begin the India portion of the journey.
Missing R (sipping ginger tea and watching Killing Fields on his couch) and friends.
Love from bangkok,
C
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