Bangkok my new home?

Bangkok Chao Phraya River

              

BTS skytrain - Thong Lo

Most of us  frequent visitors to Thailand end up thinking of our home in Thailand as the hotel or guest house we are staying in. Either hanging out solo or if your lucky with the latest soul mate in Bangkok or maybe up north in Chiang Mai, over in Isan or down in Pattaya or Phuket. Anyway, like me we end up spending enough time wherever we end up that we start feeling as comfortable in Thailand as at we do in our home country. On day I started thinking about this and  wondered if I really lived in Thailand would it feel the same as in my long visits.  My normal Thailand visits had me bouncing around for a month or so or until my visa was used up and then had me zooming back to the states to get ready to do it over again.

So in order to get a better idea about what it felt to live in Thailand I decided to spent 3 months, mostly in Bangkok, (I like Bangkok) at the same hotel. To really get the feel for long term living in Thailand I would do a visa run and would give me the feel of life as a locale. However, my hotel had me staying in the lower Sukhumvit area, eating in mostly farang orientated restaurants and street food. Along with that I was living like a tourist, drinking and spending a lot of money at the glut of bars populated with mostly farang customers. So I came to realize my stay, even though it was longer than my normal visits probably wasn’t the way life would be if I really lived in Bangkok. So made I made the decision that on my next trip I would get out of the touristy area, rent an apartment and try to get by shopping at the market for my daily needs, preparing the food I purchased, doing my own laundry, get a haircut, recharge my phone minutes and so on. My goal was to replicate my day to day living as in the states and to get a real idea of what I would be up against if I moved to Bangkok for good.

In planning my next trip I found a serviced apartment via the Internet, pricey, but partly because I could only stay for two months as most apartments rent out for a minimum of 4 months, so I was paying a premium for my short stay. Also the place, Viva Garden was newer and very, very nice, on par with a 5 star hotel. I wanted a serviced apartment opposed to just an apartment, as I need a place that was furnished and thinking it would be nice to have someone with cleaning supplies to clean the room, and kind of look after things, including me,  much like a hotel. Things like soap and cooking supplies were the sort of things I could handle.


Lesson one: To have a good selection of serviced apartments at a good rate you need to make a year lease. A security deposit will be required, equal to two months’ rent, along with a payment of one month’s rent in advance and possibly an advance payment on monthly utilities. Thailand is cash based so you’re going to need a good stash of the stuff. Just for reference – studio or one bedroom is in the range of 20 – 30,000 baht a month.                
                                                                                                                 

my helper

Viva Garden had a laundry service which did a lovely job but was far too expensive for long stay. So I set out to use their coin operated washer and dryer. Stopped cold in my laundry quest when I found out it was up to me to supply the laundry soap. So I stuffed my dirty clothes back in the bag and heading down to the 7/11 for soap. Only to find everything labeled in Thai and clerks unable to do English. Now I’m scouring the store for package labels with laundry related graphics, zoomed in on likely looking grouping while activating my innate scientific judgment and picked the nicest looking package. You have probably heard enough about Doug’s Laundry but one last thing – the machines are intimidating due to their jumbo size, flashing lights, multiple buttons buzzers and directions in Thai.


Lesson two: This ain’t Iowa, so that English I struggled through in college ain’t gonna be of much use in Thailand. Can I learn to speak and read Thai? Alternatively, finding a cute long haired dictionary might be an option but with my track record with women is probably not a long term solution. Anyway, whatever this language thing is a very real problem and if I’m going to live here I’ve got to figure out a way to deal with it.

On Nut night market beer garden

Tesco Lotus super market - On Nut

After a week or so in the apartment I came to the conclusion it was probably cheaper to buy prepared food on the street or in the market than make it myself. Of course figuring out what I was buying, even with prepared food was an ongoing problem. So I started favoring Tesco Lotus which is sort of like Costco in the USA and 7/11, yup same as the US. Except unlike the state’s 7/11 they seemed to have the best prices and are located everywhere. Both had prepared food but Tesco being a larger store had a better selection but with meats and vegetables it was Tesco or back to the wet market (open market that sells meats). Even at Tesco it was hard for me to figure out what meat I was buying as a lot of it is self serve in bulk. However, the meats that were packaged, along with many other products and signage in the store were in both English and Thai and everything perishable was refrigerated. Overall food cost me more than I thought but this was just after the flood so maybe food prices were inflated. As an example of pricing at Tesco – hamburger 129 baht a kilo, bacon 130 baht a kilo, Bacardi 598 baht and Havana Club 595 baht (OK, so I’m not a health nut).

On Nut night market

Lesson three: It’s hard and confusing work living alone in Bangkok and it costs more than you might think to get by.


My apartment was conveniently located on the BTS line, adjacent to Bangchak station at about soi 62. A much different area than lower Sukhumvit, though still not all that far from the heart of the farang action but far enough so that you know you are in Thailand. For close by entertainment it’s a Thai open air beer garden at the On Nut Market with draft beers, food vendors and live, mostly Thai music and very little English spoken.


Oh ya, got a haircut, like everything else it cost more than I thought but it was good enough cut. Bought some clothes at Tesco Lotus, shirt was cheap but good, pants were cheap. Recharged the minutes on my phone, easily enough but tried to ask a question and didn’t do so good. Spent a half a day and visited two bank offices to reestablish an account I had set up years ago and never used.


Conclusion: Maybe my choice of Bangkok as my new home base was ill conceived as it’s a major international city and the simple and inexpensive life I seek is hard to find there.Though it's a really cool place with loads of stuff to offer an expat.  Then I wonder about how to handle the visa issue, how to handle medical emergencies, what house hold goods do I move with me and how about duty and how about my credit cards and my mail,  so many things.


As I put the finishing touches on this I’m winding down my 11 or 12 th annual Asia trip in Ho Chi Minh City and was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia last week still without coming to terms regarding a new home over here. However, I kind of liked Phnom Penh, I have people in Saigon and I still get excited over Thailand,  so stay tuned.