We started our day today looking at an apartment to get an idea of the cost of living in Bangkok. We took a look at an apartment in the Asoke area. Below are shots of the facility.

The master bedroom below has a nice view of the city.

Second bedroom below.

Below is the guest bathroom.

Here is the kitchen area features a washer & dryer with fridge and cooking area.

This 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment with a sleeper sofa rents for 35000 baht and is about 65 sq meters. The internet will cost about 600 baht, electricity for moderate use is 2000 baht and water is 200 to 300 baht. The monthly living cost for housing will be 35000+600+2000+300 = 37,900 baht ($1100 USD/month).

This particular apartment is near the train station (see below) which provides access to many parts of Bangkok. An observation I made is that the train and stations are kept very clean. There isn’t a single piece of trash or plastic in the image below nor on the train.

The downside to the train in Bangkok were the huge crowds. The image below I was only able to take after a whole bunch of people exited at a particular stop as my arms weren’t free the minutes before this photo was taken.

Chinatown

We took the train to Chinatown in Bangkok and I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting a vibrant scene of vendors selling their wares, the area filled with the aromas of authentic street food but most of the shops were closed and there seem to be quite a few empty retail sites. We went on a Sunday so perhaps that was bad timing or perhaps Chinatown here is dying a slow death like most retail around the world.

After our visit to Chinatown we took a Grab back to our hotel area. Grab is the “Uber” of Thailand and most of South East Asia. We’ve had hit or miss success with Grab. Sometimes the drivers will randomly cancel our car request after they have accepted. Most of the time, the Grab app will tell you a car will arrive in 8 minutes which usually means 16 minutes. It was actually rare that the Grab car arrived within the estimated time. I don’t blame Grab or the drivers, the traffic here is terrible and I think the algorithm used to estimate time is using traffic free time distance instead of factoring in traffic.

We had lunch at “The QUAD” which appears to be a food court inside an office building. I had an amazing chicken curry and wife had river prawn pad Thai.

After lunch, we couldn’t resist getting another foot massage due to being on our feet all day. The cost in this higher end area though was 300 baht but it was also for 1 hour and we left the massage center feeling like butter.

Great food, great service and lots to do. Tomorrow will be an exciting day so stay tuned…

Categories: Bangkok
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After a butt busting 30 hours worth of flights and travel we made it to Bangkok, Thailand. First impression is that the land of smiles really deserves that moniker.

Thai Airways

We flew from the U.S. to Singapore on United and we don’t have many nice things to say about United so we’ll skip that part and move on to our flight from Singapore to Bangkok on Thai Airways.

Thai Airways had great service and great seating. Our plane was mostly empty so we had plenty of attention from the flight crew on our journey. Interestingly, the airplane seats here feature a foot rest that provides comfort for the shorter stature traveler.

Food on the plane was what you’d expect on an airplane but there were several options and the food was hot and tasty.

Bangkok

There is so much to Bangkok that writing anything feels like an injustice. We spent the first two days getting off of our 12 hour inverse jet lag. Night is day and day is night for us now and it’s been rough adjusting but we are almost there. We took the opportunity of our “down” time to get an amazing massage at our hotel spa. A 2 hours massage cost about $120 and included aroma and oil therapy and use of the sauna.

Chatuchak Weekend Market

We spent a good amount of time on Saturday visiting the Chatuchak weekend market. The flea style open market is huge and has all sorts of items for sale and very low prices. We picked up some silk scarves, elephant pants, bowls, pillow cases, spices, clothes and we ate some tasty food. Most items weren’t more than 100 baht. There are plenty of videos on YouTube about Chatuchak so check them out if you want to see more.

We took advantage of the endless massage services at the market and got an amazing foot and leg massage for our sore legs and feet. The cost was a whopping 100 baht ($3 USD). We tipped on generously.

MBK Shopping Mall Center

After Chatuchak we went over to MBK mall which is a multi-story mall featuring just about everything under the sun.

We ate lunch at a Michelin rated restaurant inside the mall and the food was quite good.

We bought a few items at the mall including some Korean face creams and I picked up a fake mini iPhone which is actually an Android phone cloned to look like an iPhone. As a gadget enthusiast, I just had to pick one up and experiment with it.

Traffic

The main drag about Bangkok so far is the traffic. Its bad – end of story.

Heat & Showers

It’s fairly hot and humid in Bangkok. Every time we go out we end up drenched in sweat so we return to our hotel and take a shower and change clothes. I’ve gone through 6 changes of clothes in 2 days but fortunately, the hotel offers laundry service and there are laundry service businesses all over our hotel. It’s fairly cheap to do the laundry and it’s only a 1 day turnaround.

Categories: Bangkok
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