21. More Chanthaburi - This and That + Transfer to Bangkok
16.10.2023
I am sitting at Bangkok Airport, luggage is checked-in and I have 1.5 hours to kill until boarding time. Perfect time window for a blog post. The bus trip from Chanthaburi to Bangkok (220 Thai Baht/ USD $6.30) and from the drop off at the train station to the airport (train ticket: 15 Thai Baht/USD $0.43) went smoothly and I arrived 3.5 hours early!
I’m loving it when I am not in a time crunch - who doesn’t? Spent 30minutes to redistribute my belongings between checked-luggage, carry-on luggage and on-body items (I strapped my cameras and most of my lenses via camera belt around my waist, then filled my carry-on backpack with heavy items like laundry detergent, umbrella, 3 board games other stuff. Goal: Getting the checked luggage down to 20kg.
20kg? Didn't you say last time max weight for checked-luggage on domestic flights is 15kg?
Sometimes you can throw money at your problems and they vanish into thin air. By now you should know that I am usually not that type of guy and rather McGyver (Yes: to McGyver is a verb in my universe. It is even in the Oxford Dictionary!) my way through a problem or endure suffering than paying with my hard earned cash. However, if you only need to spend AUD $7.00 to upgrade your checked luggage from 15kg to 20kg it is a no-brainer...even for me. I could have spent another 10 dollars or so to get it to 25kg but I thought I shouldn't overdo it. Also, it should be a piece of cake to bring the suitcase weight down to 20kg. I admit, it wasn't as easy as I thought but of course I made it and the check in guy didn't complain about the 400g overweight - of course I had banked on that kind of generosity but was prepared to take out my zinc and vitamin B12 supplements in case I was proven wrong (No, those pills don’t weigh 400g but it would have been a step in the right direction).
Okay, let's go back a bit and address the title of this blog post:
First of all I need to reinstate Chanthaburi as a vegan friendly city...at least when there are temple festivities going on. That stall where I splurged my money on delicious food the days before when I was starving...that stall was just the first one of around 30 stretching over 100m along the road adjacent to a temple wall and every single one of them offered vegan food.
OMG...I went up and down the road twice and initiated all-you-can-eat-mode. Aaaand I took additional food home with me....rice cake with muesli glazing, something like Indian pekoras but with different taste, stir-fried noodles with veggies, cooked mini sweet-potatoes, colourful jelly and last but not least popcorn! I am not sure what kind of special event was going on there but one of the vendors told me that it would continue until the 23rd October. There were groups holding a Chinese dragon on sticks parading up and down the street. Drumming could be heard coming from the temple next to me. Call me ignorant but I didn't care much about all of that. I was 100% food-focussed.
My sink was clogged again the next day and after 3 unsuccessful attempts I caved and accepted the unsatisfactory status quo because I didn't want the cleaning lady see that I had spanned a clothes line across the room decorated with Chris' travel garment. I coped with the issue by only using the sink if I needed less than half a litre of water. For everything above that I switched on the shower or bidet nozzle. Not ideal, not a biggie either.
Below: Hotel room views at sunset.
Language Proficiency: I noticed that I feel a bit language restricted since I arrived in Thailand. Hello, Thank you, how much and my newly learned: spicy/not spicy is a good start but compared to the amount of Khmer I picked up in the previous weeks my Thai pales in comparison. There is one area, though, where my Thai knowledge is far superior: numbers! Back in 2013,2014 and 2015 I learned to count from 1 to 10,000 and somehow it got stuck in my long term memory. It comes in extremely handy whenever I want to buy something.
Backpack Repair: After 2 months travelling and despite being very careful it finally happened: the zipper of my cherished extreme light 40g everyday backpack failed. Since it was a double zipper I still had the second one to close the bag but the zip itself was faulty, too, and I knew it wouldn't last much longer. Of course the failure occurred while I was shopping…such things never happen at a convenient time. On my way back to the hotel I already tried to remember the location of a tailor in an alley in the old town of Chiang Mai. Deep entangled in my thoughts I turned into the street of my hotel when I caught sight of two shops next to each other with sawing machines and other tailor equipment. I explained my problem to the women working there by showing my backpack. Once again google translate saved the day when I tried to enquire if she was working the next day which was a Sunday. She said she didn't but the lady next door would. I talked to tailor no.2 and she confirmed what I already knew and wanted: the entire zipper needed to be replaced. Price point: 100 Baht. Only 100 friggin' Baht for the labour including a badass heavy duty zipper and overnight service! I was over the moon to get my backpack fixed so quickly for such a price. The zipper had always been its Achilles heel and getting an upgrade of that part would extend its life span significantly. Next morning at 10:00am I picked it up and it looked just perfect. I couldn't see any sign that she had removed the old zipper and put a new one in. I paid and walked some metres when I thought that I should show my appreciation with more than a thank you so I went back and tipped her.
Thai roads: They are excellent and rival or surpass the road quality in many first world countries. Especially coming from Cambodia the difference is staggering. Also there are more cars or less motorbikes on the road than in Cambodia (proportionally speaking). So my subjective ranking of motorbike density on the streets is: Vietnam > Cambodia > Thailand.
Below a few random Chanthaburi impressions:
Maybe I need to re-evaluate the following observation in a few weeks again but my gut feeling is that the general living standard in Thailand is higher than in Cambodia. I can't pinpoint what exactly it is other than the amount of car ownership. It makes sense I guess because statistically speaking Thailand is more developed. I learned that Cambodia has to import a lot of goods from Thailand and also half of their electricity comes from there. What Cambodia has going for it export-wise is clothes production.
A bit of a sudden to end my post like this but on the positive side that keeps it relatively short and easy to digest. :-)
