A Day in Bangkok

I arrived to Bangkok at 6am after a 12 hour journey on the night train.  My flight the next day was very early in the morning so I decided to stay at a hotel close to the airport.  Since the airport is about 45 minutes from downtown Bangkok the hotel suggested that I store my luggage at the “left luggage” area of the train station and explore the city by day and head to the hotel in the evening.   Bangkok has a great underground and above ground rail system so I was excited to explore Bangkok cheaply and happy that I would not have to deal with the hassle of carrying my 2 backpacks around with me. 

I found the luggage storage area in a dirty little corner of the Bangkok Train Station.  It was going to cost me about $2.50 to store my bags for the entire day so I filled out some paperwork, paid the guy, and he attached luggage tags to my bags and took them into the room behind him already stacked with backpacker bags and suitcases. 

I spent most of the day exploring Bangkok and in the evening headed back to the train station to grab my bags and hop into a taxi.  One thing that I have learned about taxi drivers in this region is that most often they have no idea where they are going.  I’ve learned to always make sure to have a phone number for the hotel so that they can call when they get lost.  It’s almost useless to have an address unless it’s in their language since most don’t read English.  Sure enough, the taxi guy thinks he knows where he’s going but ends up getting lost.  I convince him to call the hotel and he goes to call and realizes that his cell phone battery has just died.  We find a payphone, he calls the hotel, and finally after many tries, we find the place.  I do admit this one was a bit tricky.

At the hotel I’m deciding what to bring on my 2-week trip to Vietnam and what I will leave at the hotel (they too have baggage storage for a small fee).  I’d rather not drag around my large backpack since I really don’t need much for Vietnam and I hear that theft is a problem there. 

Vietnam loves the $USD and in fact many things are quoted in both their local currency the “Dong” and the $USD.  I still had $3.00 that came with me when I left the US and thought that I would bring that with me and finally spend it.  I looked high and low for it but could not find it.  The more I thought about it, I was also missing my cell phone and charger.   Then it hit me… the people at the train station’s luggage storage had gone through my bags and taken a few things.  Lesson learned.  Lucky for me I had all my valuables on me except for the cell phone which I still had not used since leaving the US so maybe it wasn’t that valuable to me.  In addition to the $3.00 USD they also took a few bills I had of Malaysian money but left the bill I had of Burma money.  Obviously Burma money is worthless.