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.
Hungry I stumble down the Si Lom Road in search for food. I smell the familiar spices of south Indian cookery. I get lucky next to the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple. A huge Masala Dosa being brought to my temple. Filled with lots of potatoes. I revel in memories of my trip down to Bengaluru a couple of years ago. Sweat running down my back. The heat of the chilis combines with the unrelenting humidity of rainy season.
This area is probably my favorite. Vendors sell prepared food in bento boxes or cups. Come noon workers from the nearby business towers swarm the street. Even then, you’ll find plenty of quiet backstreets. The locals seem relaxed and there is plenty to explore.
I love taking pictures. I got some kind of Casio EXILIM EX around 2005 that I used extensively. Eventually I decided that I wanted a DSLR. Finally, in 2007 while visiting the US I had the opportunity to buy a Canon 400D with the kit lens from a small camera shop in Maryland for a reasonable price. I loved that camera so much. Only much later in 2018 I sold my Canon 400D and upgraded to a Canon 450D for the Live View mode. In recent times I tinkered with toy thermal print cameras and I enjoyed the dithered images and the immediacy of the prints.
I started my big trip in January this year. And by the time of writing it is now July. I wanted to feel as free as possible and wanted to travel with minimal luggage. One bag should be enough. I also didn’t want to bother syncing images every evening. I didn’t want to haul around a huge Camera. In fall of 2024 I sold my remaining Lenses and the 450D.
I’d gotten an iPhone 15 in 2023, and I found the camera to be quite ok. It is an expensive device so it ought to be expected, I guess? The years before I had used cheaper Motorola Moto G phones mostly. The cameras were not great but serviceable. Beside the whole vendor lock in: iOS has some things that I really don’t like and will probably exit the iPhone ecosystem once again when my current phone dies. But the pictures it takes are quite ok. Ok enough to be my main camera.
How is traveling with just a smartphone as your camera? Well, it is a lot more ‘point-and-shoot’. But between navigating foreign cities and trying to organize my travel I found it to be liberating. I see more and more people (young western tourists) with analog gear and disposable film cameras. I think it’s funny that while I am loving the freedom this multi-use rectangle in my pocket gives me other people have been going back to deconstructing and defuturing the smartphone device. Like the rise of dumbphones in recent years. We live in a time of parallel trends. Of streams that go into all kinds of directions at once. Some of it might be driven by nostalgia, but mostly it is driven by the choices we have.
Of course, there were moments that I wished for more control over my photography. But just taking my phone on this trip instead of a bulky camera gave me so much freedom and less to worry about. Sorting through and deleting pics directly my phone, on a train, on a plane, on a bus (if I don’t get motion sick, that is). Sharing a quick picture to friends and family through Signal. I still do some image ‘developing’ in darktable before posting them on the blog. Not only to remove the EXIF data but also to creatively work with the picture.
I still love photography and digital photography in particular. I am not done with dedicated picture taking devices. There might be a future where I go back to having a bigger camera. Especially full frame has been calling me for some time.
Only a five-minute walk through the blistering midday heat is a very interesting store that always garners quite a large line. I also decided to watch for a little while. But in the end didn’t want to wait 30 to 60 minutes in the scorching heat for a bowl of this soup. It is famous because it allegedly is the same continuous soup for 50 years. It is Sunday and the foreigner crowd here seems even bigger today. I might try them one day. But not today.
I finally wander off to a nearby mall to eat a some eternal noodles in a blissfully airconditioned room. Why they were called eternal was not revealed to me but they were darker than other noodles I had here so maybe these were made with whole grain? In any case, dining here was a great idea not only for my sensitive skin but also because the ancient noodles were delicious. The large number of locals confirmed my suspicion that this restaurant was not only cheap but also well regarded.
I feel the humidity rising while I walk home. Was that a drop?
While I sit on the balcony of my apartment I suddenly hear the sound of wind blowing very strong through the palms and the scaffolding of the nearby construction site. It begins to pour like I have never seen before. Best to get inside.
After all that hard work of eating, reading and watching YouTube I finally can do something I was looking forward to all weekend: my taxes. Thanks to Elster I am able to do these from Thailand no problem. I finally press submit on the tax form. No 10 seconds later the electricity stops working. A black-out. Well then, back to my book.
The palace is at a considerable distance from my hotel. I decided to walk anyway. It is required to wear long pants and sleeved shirts, so I was already drenched in sweat when I got there. You can buy and rent elephant pants
for the duration of your visit from one of the many vendors outside the entrance. Well, at least I do know that now.
Speaking of entrance: we had to walk through a park, down through a subterranean foyer and through a gate to finally be able to buy the (quite expensive) entrance ticket to the palace. It is well worth it, don’t get me wrong. By the time we arrived in the foyer we were a big crowd of visitors, but the lines for the ticket sale moved quick.
It’s crowded everywhere. I take off my shoes to go into the palace temple. No photos allowed inside.
It is full of people. I barely find a place to sit. Everyone seems respectful. Don’t point your feet at the Buddha. I stay for about 20 minutes observing the foreigners and locals praying.
I get why it is such a popular place. It felt very exotic : Symbols, figures, ornament, and gold everywhere.
After a couple of hours wandering around the palace grounds I went to buy some water and onto the next destination. Wat Pho. I posted a picture of Wat Pho
or Wat Pho
before. I might post even more pictures in the future. It has many aesthetically pleasing spots.
The main attraction is the reclining Buddha. Yep, it is… big. In all honesty, I was even more impressed by the amount of shear Buddha statues here.
Full of these new impressions I decided to also walk back the 3 km to my hotel. It didn’t rain. A great day.
The last week I have been staying in Thonglor. It is supposed to be a hip neighborhood especially colored by the Japanese diaspora and the affluent upper class of Bangkok. The mix sounded intriguing enough to make me book here a room for a whole week. Even between prenatal yoga classes, Japanese Kindergartens or the Donki mall you can still find some pretty amazing Thai street food. 100THB for a milk tea at the luxury mall or 20THB for a milk tea in the street?
The room itself might be not the best. The walls are thin as paper and I heard things in the night I’d rather forget. But the Thai staff is superb as ever and the location is hard to beat. The washer/dryer combo in my apartment basically ran non-stop the first couple of days. The gym is well-equipped and the pool is pleasantly cool and uncrowded. I still love being in Southeast Asia, but it’s time for a change soon.
This area is probably my favorite. Vendors sell prepared food in bento boxes or cups. Come noon workers from the nearby business towers swarm the street. Even then, you’ll find plenty of quiet backstreets. The locals seem relaxed and there is plenty to explore.
