Laundry Day

Being on the road this long lends itself to a certain rhythm. Not every hostel or hotel has a laundry service or some of them charge outrageous per-piece prices I am not willing to pay. Usually there is a full service laundry shop nearby wherein the workers will wash, dry and fold all your laundry until the next day for a per kg price.I used many such shops in the Philippines and in Vietnam. Always very happy with the result and the easy access of them.

In rare cases I will do my laundry in a laundromat myself. Here in Silom I don’t really have any good laundry services nearby and even the closest self-service laundry is 10-minute walk. No problem: just jump on a grab bike or walk the short distance up to Decho Road.

In a small side street in the back houses is a glorious laundromat. The machines are quick and easy to operate with signage being clear and in English. You buy your detergent from a vending machine on the wall for a mere 5THB. You then spend 60THB for the washing cycle and 50THB for the drier. I won’t put some shirts in the drier in risk of shrinking them to doll sizes.

The wash takes 25 minutes. Just enough time to go around the corner and enjoy a nice hot bowl of duck noodles and have a short chat with the duck noodle lady who speaks English very well. Then back to the laundry and change my clothes from the washer to the drier. Another 28 minutes to go I check out the assorted goods of the 7-11 around the corner. After cooling down inside and buying water, vitamin-c drink or to be honest any kind of snack I head back to the laundry a last time. I bundle up all my fresh clothes and head back to my accommodation.

I do this about once a week and usually am done in about 1.5 hours. Not as easy as having a washer and drier in the apartment with me, but I find it to be soothing activity that brings back a bit of structure into this current vagabond life of mine.