Living in Bangkok

This last week at school was pretty laid back—I went in every day, and spent every morning doing nothing but chatting with my coworkers and reading a book on my phone. I’d eat lunch with the other English teachers, and then we’d spend the afternoon teaching our remote classes. I went back to the Shambhala meditation group after work on Wednesday, and I got some new glasses.  On Friday, Roman and I took the BTS to nearby Ratchathewi, and explored Soi Petchaburi 5 and 7, some hidden streets east of the BTS. It was one of those little secret neighborhoods in Bangkok—it’s not an area that’s well-known to tourists (I don’t think), but was bustling with people stopping to buy fruit or vegetables or cheap t-shirts, and vendors selling hot food and cut guavas and flowers. Note the surprise baby at left There was also a mosque nearby, so there were several Halal carts (and a couple burger carts runs by women in hijabs). We stopped in at Pe Aor, a small, simple restaurant serving Tom Yum.

I had a four day weekend, and was able to explore some different activities in the city, as case numbers continue to decline and the strict Covid restrictions start to ease. I feel like we're starting to discover a little more of what Bangkok has to offer, and that's pretty exciting.  Shall we look at it day-by-day? Thursday I decided to walk to Khlong Toei market and almost died. Kidding. Kinda. The market is about a two mile walk from our condo—which is a bit of a long walk for Bangkok during the day, but I left somewhat early in the morning, and the day wasn’t supposed to get too hot. I decided to walk through Benjakitti Park, one of the biggest parks in Bangkok (which I still hadn’t checked out). I knew there was a risk I wouldn’t be able to exit from the other side—because of the pandemic, they will often only keep 1-2 park gates open so they can control temperature checks, etc. But at that point I was still cool and full of energy and it didn’t seem like a big deal