Ayutthaya

A squirrel with reddish-brown fur and a white belly is on a tree trunk.

Golden Mountain

Prayer bells with red ribbons and tags hanging at a temple, with Thai and buddhist flags in the background.

Today was a tourist day! After enjoying the masked dance in the royal theatre I made my way up the Golden Mountain Wat Saket Ratchawora Mahawihan. It is 344 small steps (probably not DIN 18065) to the top where a golden Pagoda crowns the artificial mountain.

View of Wat Saket and the Golden Mount in Bangkok, with temple rooftops and white stupas in the foreground.

Along the way there are lots of interesting corners and tidbits of information sprinkled throughout. Many many buddha statues but also interesting information about the vultures that lived here in the 19th century during cholera times. The view from the top is worth the 100THB entrance fee alone.

Black and white photo of a small Buddha shrine nestled in a wall alcove, surrounded by dense foliage and wooden stools.

Khim

A woman in traditional outfit playing a thai dulcimer.

Coffee at Kinokuniya

A bright coffee shop counter with wooden shelves displaying coffee beans, brewing equipment, and pastries, under “K COFFEE” and “UCC” signs.

Laundry Day

Laundry machines in a self service laundromat

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.

Sri Maha Mariamman Temple

Colorful tops on the fence to a hindu temple.

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.

Silom Sathorn

A street food stall selling prepared cups of rice with toppings. 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.

On the BTS

Image Description

I am happy that I am staying close to the BTS. When I fancy to go somewhere I can just jump on the train. They are frequent, cool and cheap.

Sticker Update

A Macbook with lots of travel stickers on the lid.

The current state of the stickers on my 2023 M2 MacBook Pro after 6 months of travel.

Taking pictures while traveling light

A black and white printout on thermal paper of a stippled drawing of a decorative, patterned mask, resting on a wooden surface.

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.