The downtown atmosphere of Bangkok. I went to the Sukhumvit area to look for a laundromat, but could not find any of the places I had heard about on the Internet. I was approached by some pretty ladies in the backstreets. As expected of Sukhumvit. I had no choice but to go back and find the location of the washing machine in the suspicious alley that the hotel receptionist had told me about. The right side of the machine was working, and I managed to do my laundry for 30 baht, but it did not dry completely in one day in the hotel room, and I brought somewhat damp clothes to Cambodia today. I plan to dry them in my room here.
Worried about whether the washing machine was really working, I came to check on it and bumped into this girl who had also come to check on a strange foreigner hanging around. She is a downtown girl who seems to live in the next-door neighbor's house.
At first, the water did not fill up easily and I was worried that something was broken, but it took an hour to finish the washing. I came to check on it from time to time. This is a picture of dehydration just before the end of the washing process. The display says there is one minute left. I had no idea that there was a laundromat in such a place. I would never read about it in a travel magazine.
But then I waited until 5 p.m. and went to 7-11 to buy beer (by Thai law, you cannot buy alcohol between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.), but it started raining while I was there. I had no umbrella, so I took shelter in front of the store for a while. But this is what a half heavy rain is really like. It did not stop raining after all. I ran to a nearby hotel, soaking wet.
So, that's how I got out of Thailand. I took a subway and a bus to Don Mueang Airport. The bus is cheap, 30 Baht with air conditioner. Other buses do not have air-conditioning. I
followed the policy of avoiding cabs and using public transportation as
much as possible, which I learned from a trip with my friend Dr. N, who is now a professor at R University. I
almost got off at the wrong subway station due to wrong information on
the Internet, but I realized my mistake on the information board in the
train and was saved from the trouble. This airport route is inexpensive, but is almost unknown. Compared to Suvarnabhumi Airport, Don Mueang is far away from the train station. It is a bit difficult for a public transportation enthusiast like me. Afterwards, I had brunch at the Coral Lounge after the international security check, using my priority pass as usual.
Altough I confused with their bad web system for booking, the check-in counter of Air Asia was friendly, and the plane flew without any problems. Below us is the land of Cambodia, which is flooded with water during the rainy season. Compared to Thailand, where the land is neatly laid out in a rectangular grid pattern, the farmlands look a bit more shoddily maintained.
Siem Reap Airport after landing. The airport is a countryside airport, and it is hard to imagine that it is located near a world-famous tourist spot. Many of the passengers on the plane were from Europe and America. It was not raining at that time. I was a little worried about the immigration procedures.
Black clouds behind the plane just after it lands. This will soon bring heavy rain. At the airport, a bureaucratic uniformed officer slowly processes an all-arrival visa. Here I paid the visa fee of US$30. It took quite a while, but since my hotel was not picking me up, I bought a SIM card while I was there. The store in front of me charges $5, and the one next to me charges $3 for 3 days of unlimited internet access. Well, that's about it. Incidentally, this country accepts US dollars, so it's convenient. I exchanged my large amount of baht bills into US dollars at Don Mueang airport. It is more advantageous than Japanese Yen.
I bought a SIM card and wander back to the exit. The tuk-tuk driver, with my name handwritten on the tuk-tuk, spots me and apologizes for the delay. No problem," I reply. He is a very friendly driver and covers me with rain shields in front and on both sides to keep me dry in the heavy rain that has started to fall. It was raining so hard that he was driving without a raincoat and wearing an ordinary shirt. He was a kind man, so I tipped him $1 when I got off. When I applied for a one-day tour at the front desk later, I was told that he would drive me back to the hotel. He was a nice guy, and I was glad to know that Cambodian people are friendly, even if you exclude the tourist attractions, like the SIM card guy. Well, except for the uniformed airport officials. Incidentally, the rain is pouring in, so I'm holding the rain shields on both sleeves with my shoes so they don't fly off. In the foreground is a small 900 baht suitcase that I bought yesterday at MBK, a shopping mall in Bangkok. So far, no frames have been removed. The large suitcase containing the teaching materials was kept at the hotel downtown.
Friendly and very pleasant tuk-tuk driver ............................. Middle-aged men are scarce in this country. I didn't know this fact at that time. We took selfies together in a carefree manner.
I arrived at the hotel in the rain and was greeted by the owner, a calm lady. The hotel was quite nice, and the price of $48 for 2 nights seemed reasonable, but Booking.com said it was non-cancellable. The truth is that I made a reservation without knowing this and had to come here after all. Tomorrow, we will have today's driver drive us for the whole day for $25, which is a good price. However, I heard that the ticket to Angkor Wat costs $37, so it is a very expensive country to enter and to see the sights. It may be cheap if you think of it as ODA in a different form.
A quaint shower room. There is a small pool by the entrance, and a small garden outside the room with running water. I could not swim at all in Thai hotels, so I might as well do it here. I have the impression that I am in Khmer here.
I borrowed a bicycle from the inn to go shopping for dinner. But it has flat tires, and the brake is only on the left side. I rented a bicycle, so I had no choice but to ride with it. I found a supermarket and bought some beer, but the dinner I wanted was not sold anywhere. There is a restaurant, but they don't seem to sell take-out. I looked for a restaurant, but there was not a single one that sold rice and side dishes, which are available everywhere in Bangkok. In addition, police officers are conspicuous at every intersection. I was surprised at the difference from Bangkok. I had no choice but to buy some bread and potato chips at the second supermarket.
So we had a dinner of cup noodles, bread and potato chips, which we had not had for a long time. The potato chips were also salty. Speaking of spicy food, when I ate sushi at Launge in Don Mueang Airport in the morning, I put some wasabi on a plate and tried to eat it. A small amount of wasabi goes up my nose and looks just like Japanese wasabi, but is there a difference in the type of wasabi? By the way, Budweiser, which you see here, is in the low $1 range, while Chiang is in the high $2 range. I wonder why this is. Since this is a tourist town, most of the shopping is done in dollars, but small change is given in Reals, the local currency. The large number is the same as in Laos.
(A little overlap in content.)This is the hotel where I stayed during my stay in Siem Reap, which I booked on Booking.com without knowing it was non-cancellable and had to come here. As I mentioned before, it was a small hotel with only one guest for two nights for US$48 (Cambodia is basically paid in US dollars). The cost of a daily chartered tuk-tuk to explore the Angkor ruins was $25. There is a small swimming pool to the left of the entrance. After exploring Angkor Wat, I swam in this pool because it was hot and sunny in the evening as you can see in the picture. The bicycle on the right is the one with a flat tire on the rear wheel that I rode to buy dinner on the first day. At that time, I had not yet studied the history of modern Cambodia, so I was in a state of high-spiritedness. The owner, madam, was a very nice lady.
There is a private garden outside the rooms on the first floor, and as you can see, even the very small pool has hot water. It reminded me of a similar hotel I stayed in South Africa a long time ago. I would like to visit this hotel again, at that time for a week or so.
The mangoes I bought at the local supermarket were cheap and wonderfully tasty. But as I mentioned above, I couldn't buy any real food, so I ended up with bread and other things from the supermarket. I need to gather more information.
This is also a local black beer bought at a local supermarket for about $1.50. The alcohol content is 8%, which is very high. I forgot to bring this can back as a souvenir.
This is the hotel breakfast on the morning of departure, prepared by a woman who comes in the morning. It was yakisoba style, a change from the American style of the previous day, and very tasty.
I visited the Angkor National Museum after visiting the ruins. I thought it would have been better if I had visited this museum before visiting the ruins, as the exhibits explained the peak period of the Khmer civilization. The driver was waiting for me within one hour, so there are no time more watch the exhibitions.
Most of these statues are carved out of sandstone, which is also very interesting from a geological point of view. The peak period of the Khmer culture was from the 10th to 12th century, which coincides with the Kamakura period in Japan.
There was a bookcase in the museum store that quietly sold literature on the Pol Pot era. As mentioned above, I wonder how many tourists would notice this.
It is now the morning of the third day back in Thailand. This is a shot of the road from the hotel to the airport by tuk-tuk. There are no more scenes reminiscent of the Pol Pot era. I would like to support Cambodia's enthusiasm for the new era.
I remember feeling the same way when I visited South Africa just after the end of apartheid, although the situation was completely different. Various things are being built with the aim of becoming a tourist city. It looks like it is going to develop in the future. There were very few Japanese people in these foreign tourist destinations, which were becoming more and more vibrant after Corona. I fear that Japanese society is becoming very inward-looking.
The international lobby of the modern Siem Reap Airport. Duty-free stores are lined up in the lobby, which is the same scene at all airports. I was relieved to hear a group of students talking in Japanese.
I boarded AirAsia again and flew back to Thailand. The weather has changed since I arrived, and it is now clear and sunny again. I happened to be next to a Japanese couple on this flight.
The round trip cost me $207 with 20kg checked baggage, which is a bit expensive because I had to pay through an agent. It would have been cheaper if I had flown directly through the AirAsia website, but this website has a terrible specification and I couldn't pay by card.
Now that I am back in Bangkok, I took a short walk around the city. I finally learned to distinguish between the BTS and MRT subways. Both subways are very inexpensive (from 15 to 40 baht, multiply by 4 for Japanese yen). I use the coins I accumulate from change to buy tickets (plastic tokens for MRT, cards for BTS) from 1 baht.
This day, I took the Airport Link train to the end of the line near the hotel, and then took the BTS to a place called Siam, where many department stores are located. The atmosphere is similar to that of Umeda, Osaka, where the Hankyu and Hanshin department stores are located. The stores of Gucci and other brand-name goods are crowded, reflecting the current booming economy of this country where tourism has recovered. Above all, the people are very lively.
There was a specialty store of Gundam goods in a mall called Siam something, so I took a picture of it. I was surprised to see Japanese signs everywhere. However, the popularity of Gundam is also great. There were many young Westerners in the store.
In the same mall, there happened to be a Japanese ramen shop, so I went in and had a Shio Ramen at a place called 8-ban Ramen. I had been having Thai food for lunch and dinner at each university I visited, so the Japanese food was very fresh and tasty. The price was a low 103 baht, or about 420 yen, which is cheaper than in Japan.
Now, here is the hotel BBHouse in Bangkok downtown, which I have mentioned many times. The price is 780 Baht/night without breakfast. It is only 3 minutes walk from Ramkhamhaeng station (I can't remember how many times I heard this), which is only one train from Suvarnabhumi Airport by the airport link. It is a perfect place for me to stay as I don't use cabs. I had to carry my heavy luggage to the airport on the way back, so I chose this place without hesitation after searching on Booking.com.
This is the entrance, but it is not easy to find. The front desk is friendly, but sometimes there is no one there. However, when traveling to Cambodia, they will take care of my luggage, and you can freely use the microwave oven and hot water from the electric kettle on the first floor, which is convenient for heating pizza or making drip coffee. I am writing this diary on the big LG TV screen in the room. I stayed here total for four nights before and after my trip to Cambodia. It was a very good accommodation for me.
The room is spacious and well-equipped for a 780 baht budget hotel. The TV can be connected to the PC via HDMI, and the large screen is very good for watching PC.
I was very grateful to have a shower with hot water, as I had encountered two times in a row where only lukewarm water came out of the showers. The water in the toilet sometimes leaks and the water for the toilet does not stop. If I had to worry about this every time, I would not be able to continue my trip.
The elevated station above is the Airport Link station near the hotel directly from the airport, and down from there you cross the old Thai National Railways tracks. It seems some trains run some time, however I could not see.
I was impressed that Dr. C of P University always slapped his students' butts, saying "Hurry Up! Not Thai train, but (Japanese) Shinkansen!
After leaving the hotel near the train station where I stayed for four nights, I had to carry two heavy suitcases up the manual stairs to the Airport Link station. The rest of the way to the airport was made easy by escalators and other means. Suvarnabhumi Airport is a very convenient airport for carrying luggage on the way.
I left my two heavy luggage at the luggage storage near the airport station for 100 Baht/day, and returned to the city for lunch. I ordered curry, which is called "Katsu-kare (pork cutlet curry)" in katakana, at a food court of BigC in the city. The roux was a bit thin, but very tasty. 87 baht, I think. The price at Coco Ichi here is about 230 baht, so it is less than half of the price.
After killing some time at MBK and other shopping malls in town, I finally came back to the airport. There was still some time before departure, so I spent about an hour at the airport cafe, eating one of the croissants you see above with my PC. After that, I ordered a new cappuccino and spent another hour. Two young Russian women were sitting next to me, talking fast.
When I went to the JAL counter about 4 hours before departure, I was surprised to be told that I could check in my baggage already. Normally, check-in is not available until less than three hours before departure, but JAL is a company that does it right. I hurriedly took out my luggage from the baggage area in the B1 floor and brought it to the counter. The backpack was given to me by the high school attached Phayao University, the last place I visited this time. The backpack I bought at the Korat Dinosaur Museum a long time ago was already torn, so I replaced it with this one. I plan to use it again for the next field trip in December.
The focus is unusually out of focus for an iPhone, but now that I'm through the security check, I'm looking for a lounge to kill some time!
Well, the Air France lounge, which you can enter with Priority Card. The shower was available and I was able to use it right away. It's a moment of relief.
The food here is also quite good. I had another can of beer and a Budweiser. We still have more than two hours to go before boarding, but we're hungry first.
After boarding, we boarded a JAL flight. I was seated in the last row, and the seats in the back were quite empty. It's about 5 hours before my flight back to Japan. I was torn between Ebisu and this one, but I decided this, anyway, Japanese beer is the best.
I woke up to prepare breakfast. Dawn is breaking over Shikoku.
I'm already on my standard JAL flight, and the breakfast is quite good.... We are almost there....
さて楽しい１ヶ月あまりのタイ滞在もこうして無事終了しました．次は１２月の再訪問にむけて，今から準備を始めます．長らくのお付き合いありがとうございました．
This is a new window. The light shielding state seems to be changed electrically by pressing the small round switch below the window. On the left, the window is darkened. On the right is the middle state. I did not know this.
Well, my enjoyable month-long stay in Thailand has come to an end. I will start preparing for my next visit in December. Thank you very much for your long time cooperation.