Slouching Towards Reality
Trip Start
Mar 24, 2007
1
9
Trip End
Apr 07, 2007
Tokyo, Japan
Saturday, April 7, 2007
In my earlier posting from Siem Reap, I neglected to note that in Siem Reap, they predominantly use US dollars. We made the mistake of converting some currency into Riel, but that way they seem to screw you twice -- once in converting dollars to Riel and again when they charge you Riel prices at an even less favorable exchange rate sometimes. All prices are listed in US dollars and that seems to be what all the locals prefer. When we withdrew money from ATM's they even spit out dollars rather than Riel.
We arrived back in Bangkok late Thursday night and took a taxi to our hotel -- Hotel Atlanta, which had been recommended by a friend who hadn't actually stayed there but had heard it was nice...or interesting at least. It is a charming old place, which a beautiful lobby a nice little restaurant and a garden and pool in back. It is a quirky place. They consider themselves a budget hotel so they have signs at reception and elsewhere that say "no complaints...at the prices we charge." So we didn't complain to them, but Sonia had plenty of complaints. Her golden quote was "I love this hotel...except for the rooms." She was particularly creeped out by our bathroom, which had a bit of a mildew farm growing on the grout in the shower, which was all tile, including the tub, so it was quite fertile ground. Otherwise our room was spacious -- we even had a sitting room -- but not particularly nice. We did enjoy a dip in the pool our first night, which was refreshing, but it too looked worse for the wear -- a number of tiles on the pool floor were missing and hadn't been replaced. Well, we didn't complain, we just sucked it up, and enjoyed it as much as possible.
Yesterday, we slept in then got breakfast in the hotel restaurant, Ah! We then caught a taxi down to Wat Pho where we caught a water taxi across the Chao Phraya River to Wat Arun, which was very stunning. We crossed the river again and went to Wat Pho, which has a reknowned massage school, and we got one-hour Thai massages side-by-side. It was very relaxing. After that we cycled through severla taxi and tuk-tuk drivers who either wouldn't take us to Siam Square of tried to rip us off. We finally found a reputable taxi driver who took us there. We had hoped to find a place for a late lunch, but it ended up being a wild goose chase and we returned to our hotel for a light bite before being picked up for a ride to our evening dinner cruise on the river. The cruise was very enjoyable. It wasn't too hot or muggy, the river was beautiful by city lights at night, and the Thai music and dancing was nice too. Unfortunately, our veggie food left a lot to be desired. Back at the hotel we relaxed a bit before packing up our bags and getting a few hours of sleep before our 4:15 am taxi pick-up for the airport. Now we're done with the first leg of our trip from Bangkok to Tokyo (and Sonia had left over Yen to share with me for internet time). Next we fly to Seattle for another layover. Then it's back to Dulles around 9 pm. We're both dreading the return to work on Monday but looking forward to sleeping in our own beds again after two weeks for me and three weeks for Sonia.
