Saturday, May 15

Is anyone else a liiiiittle surprised I'm still updating this blog so frequently? I feel like once this second lockdown started, the blog has sort of been serving a similar purpose as it did during quarantine—it gives me something to do and a way to collect my thoughts. Also, I suppose all these events—struggles at Immigration, cooking adventures, the apartment search—are engaging enough to me (not to mention all those meals). But I know it's not exactly the kind of thing a person would usually start a blog over.

But I keep thinking I'll cut down to one or two blog entries a week and then it seems I still have so much to say!

I'm gonna report on the last few days in snippets, though...

Visas: Friday morning we headed out to Immigration to get an extension on Roman's visa, and he had to pay an extra 1,000 baht for overstaying his visa by two days! Our visas were good through May 18, but the stamp we received on entry was through May 12, and that's the date they go by (we had no idea and hadn't paid any attention to the date on the stamp. I was lucky my school had me go in earlier—though now I realize it wasn't a coincidence). I split the fine with Roman, and it wasn't a huge amount of money, but still—one would like to go to Immigration and not encounter any surprises for once. From what I've been told, there is no ATM at Immigration, and we spent almost everything in our wallets paying for Roman's extension and the fine and we had just enough cash leftover for cab fare to the BTS. But we can now both stay in the country though June 11, when we'll have to figure out the next extension.

Apartments: We found an apartment we both liked quite a lot near the Nana BTS. It's a pretty short walk from the station—about seven minutes, and although the area has a lot of malls & commercial spaces, there are still a number of street food carts and a local kind of vibe.

It is located in a red light area of Bangkok, which really makes no difference right now—gogo bars and those kinds of massage parlors have been shut down since before we arrived. But if we were to live there, I'm sure that at some point during the year, the street would change a lot, and we'd probably have to navigate through drunk foreigners whenever we go out in the evening. But neither of us are terribly concerned over that prospect—we'd be living on the 15^th floor, far above all those happenings.

The building is older—maybe built in the 80's—and does have some kind of musty old vibes, which isn't my favorite, mostly because my body reacts poorly to any kind of mildew or mold. But they are replacing the old carpeting on the all the floors with linoleum, and the room itself doesn't have any carpeting. There are several services on the main floor—laundry, a convenience store, a massage parlor, etc. There is also a large pool and a large exercise room.

And the condo itself is pretty great! The rooms are painted different colors—a kind of robin's egg blue in the living room and master bedroom, and a rose pink in the second bedroom.

There are two bathrooms, which I find unnecessary, but there is super cute orange tile in one of the bathrooms.

We saw several other apartments in the building, and every other one had a totally separate room for the kitchen, but the owner of this one knocked down the separating wall, so the kitchen isn't quite so walled off.

It's also quite big—78 square meters, with a ton of storage space. My only real qualm is that guests could at one time smoke in the apartment. I couldn't smell it, but sometimes those scents linger forever, you know? The space has been unoccupied for a year but the owner has been paying for weekly cleaning (which makes a huge difference—the first place we saw had also been unoccupied for a year and hadn't been cleaned and it felt super musty). So that's given it a lot of time to air out?

The agent we're working with is going to see if the owners will drop the price at all (it's listed at 18,000, which is within our budget) and also if they'd consider replacing the couch cushions. The couch is not very nice, and I also think replacing any linens/upholstered things would make the place feel fresher. So we'll see!

Pigeons: here is a pigeon that landed on our balcony and flew away as I approached.

New Style: We found a great salon in Sathorn and both got much-needed haircuts.

Silom: Astonishingly, we were able to sit down for lunch on Saturday outside a street food cart in Silom.

I also posed outside the Silom station.

Simulacrum: Finally, here's a photo of a traffic police mannequin they have set up at a busy intersection near Phetchaburi MRT, presumably to deter traffic violations?

He never tires