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.
Time is running out. I am now officially entering the last few months of my travel adventure. The good news arrived last week in the form of an E-Mail: My coop informed me that I won the housing lottery for the option on an apartment in Karlsruhe. The lease will start in September. That gives me ample time to conclude my travels as well as to prepare for my return to Germany.
Concerning the next weeks it’s probably sensible to stay in SEA for at least a little while longer. To keep my costs in check. I am still enjoying Bangkok. I explored many markets, temples, malls, small streets and parks over the last days. But it feels like my time to leave Bangkok comes soon. I am unsure where to go next. I did amass quite a bit of luggage over the last 2 months. One idea I had was to just store part of it here in Bangkok and go explore the north of Thailand. I am surprised that it’s such pleasant weather despite it being the rainy season.
Being prone to anxious thought patterns, I find that my planning always takes more energy than I anticipate. Counteracting that I tried to go into a new place with minimal to no information but that gets problematic real fast too. Being tired and stuck at an airport at 2am with no idea how to get to the accommodation is no fun too. When I land in a new place, it takes time for me to orient. I noticed that I am not as quick to adapt compared to some other travelers I met. Striking a balance between planning and “figure it out when I get there” is surprisingly challenging.
Even after five months, I still make mistakes. I face challenging situations often: no clean shirt and no laundry in sight, the sink or bathroom is stinky or outright dirty, roaches saying hello, bad planning that leads to expensive refund of flight reservations, accidentally booking a room in a sketchy neighborhood or accidentally ordering food from questionable places. That is part of being a traveler, I guess. Even the best of planning doesn’t prevent mistakes. Stuff goes wrong, and I became used to it. Sometimes it’s my fault, sometimes it’s the circumstances. I learned to be ok with either and roll with the punches.
There’s less self-blame and less anxiety about it these days. I try to find a balance between planning and spontaneity. My new timeframe reset the focus, but I still embrace the slow-traveling mindset. I am never afraid that I could miss out on something. I can always come back to that specific country/region in the future for a dedicated visit. I am more relaxed and less stressed by smaller obstacles. If I compare myself now with me when I went to Santiago — I am way more laid-back and confident. In just a couple of months I developed a deep trust in my abilities to work through anything. I am so grateful to have this opportunity and the time to explore the world on my own terms. At the same time, I am looking forward to establishing a stable base in Karlsruhe in September.
Time to do some tourist stuff in Bangkok! It took me a couple of hours to explore this famous market near the Mo Chit BTS station. It’s huge. You can get your usual cheap trinkets and souvenirs here but I was more interested in the section which had more handicrafts and local products. I bought a couple of things but not too much. The customized passport covers for around 100THB is a huge hit with us Farangs. I couldn’t resist to get one myself. This market is clearly aimed at tourists but feels very chill and you don’t get harassed by the vendors like in some parts of MBK Shopping Mall. There are also street food vendors everywhere. With a wonderful Pad Thai in my belly and a bag full of goodies I made my way back home.
For some reason, I saw the trailer for City Slickers today: “For Mitch Robbins turning 39 wasn’t the end of the world. It just felt like it”. This was a movie that was shown on RTL all the time in the 90s. Can you believe Jack Palance won an Academy Award
for his role in that movie? As corny as the movie is: Being 39 myself and having too much time on my hands, I also had some existential thoughts. Most relevant, the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of living in my near future. In the end of the movie, Mitch Robbin’s monomyth
hero’s journey is completed as expected. My own travel journey is slowly, slowly coming to an end as well. The next steps have to be carefully considered.
I could make a home anywhere, sure. But it draws me back to the city in Germany that I have been living in since my 20s. Seeing so many possibilities out there, I realized that it’s not the worst place in the world. It has very good public transportation. Karlsruhe, being a college town it is pretty bike friendly and I coincidentally do like biking. It has most the amenities you’d want, friendly people and (pretty important) lots of employment options for computer nerds like me. A close contender is Berlin, which is even more enticing in terms of employment, but it is a cold place and I even when I lived there I never felt at home.
My thoughts keep coming back to Karlsruhe. With a little patience, I would also be able to get an apartment through the housing co-op that I am a member of. It all just makes sense. I sometimes resented living in Karlsruhe for various reasons. Reminding myself that the perfect place doesn’t exist. Traveling has shown me a lot of the positives of living in Germany. And I realized that in my core I am an urban creature.
With these feelings in mind, I entered the monthly housing lottery of my co-op this week. Might take a couple of tries before I win, but I am looking forward to having a home again.
Of course, you always want what you don’t have. Same time last year, I couldn’t wait to get rid of the apartment. But I realized that for me, it is really restricting to live out of a backpack for an extended amount of time. Having a place where to put things sounds nice.
And it was never meant to last forever. Travel will of course end. I don’t regret anything. The trip is amazing. And it was great that I purged so much stuff before I went on this (now 5 months long) trip. I can restart my settled life there with hopefully less clutter in a new apartment. Maybe in a new part of town. Fingers crossed.
After a stopover in Manila I made my way on a red eye to Bangkok. Very sleepy I arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport at 2 in the night trying to find my way around the A/B Grab stations to hop on a car to my hotel near Sukhumvit road.
The next day was spent walking around the immediate neighborhood and checking out the local stores. But to be honest I was still exhausted from the night lost in the flight. The spicy curry for lunch only woke me up for a couple of hours. After that I relaxed most of the day. It’s a chaotic place and I might want to try to find something a little more quiet soon.
Anyway, it seems like Bangkok is a convenient place to stay. It is a major hub that offers plenty of flights to Europe. I might need them for example to attend apartment showings or sort some stuff out in Germany. My tourist visa for Thailand is valid until early August so that gives me some time to organize things.
“Here no Ox can hide!”
