I took my mother to Thailand. She's not a hippy momma (or Pachamama as some might say). She's just the run-of-the-mill conservative type who judges everything she comes across. I would also be introducing her to my ex(and only ex-girlfriend) who is still my friend (kind of). So things were always going to be interesting...to say the least.
So how did it go?
We started off in Bangkok in a really sub-average place. My mom's 70, and I'm 36, so the varying abilities for what we can both handle are quite different.
Let's just say that for that first night she was pretty upset. Which came as a nightmare for me. I didn't want to drag my mom to a place she hated.
We were on some budget Chinese drag in Ratchattewi, a suburb that sprawls out from underneath a train station. We had to scale a lot of stairs to get to our room. Both the station stairs and the high-pitched stairway of the dinky hostel itself. It was a double-bunk room for two. I slept on the top bunk and my mother on the bottom bunk.
First of all, I should admit. Most of the negative feelings we got tangled in were my fault, I got my directions wrong. I didn't know that our place wasn't round the corner from the station. So when we got out of the train that took us from the airport, we got completely lost.
Add to that the fact that we e had these two massive suitcases we were trawling along. And then after a fair bit of dodgy darkness and wailing sirens and weird grease-covered pavements, and asking one or two bystanders where our hotel might be - my mom getting more flustered by the second, we finally hailed a cab. Which was something I really didn't want to do, given that this was meant to be a budget holiday.
So we weren't exactly off to a great start. A cab driver eventually took us to our place. He was friendly. Our place had a guy inside a bachelor type - Indian in case you're interested - who was happy to open the door for us. Only he wasn't the owner. Then we had to wait for the guy whose hostel it was. It was a long drawn-out process. And it definitely felt longer at 8:30pm in the less salubrious parts of Bangkok than it ordinarily would.
And you know how these things are. . . They're always worse when you don't know what you're doing, and when you're in a third world country which, though safe, seems like the beginning of a nightmare stay in the ghetto, at least for a 70 year old woman after a 24 hour flight.
Anyhow, so eventually this Chinese guy named Tchoey helped us. He was amazingly amicable and warm. He showed us upstairs to our room, which was up this massive flight of stairs, and then he took us to the nearest 7/11. It took a while for my mom to come to her senses. But despite a rough start, she decided to make the most of it.
Lessons Learned
Okay, so lesson number one for me, aside from knowing where you're going in the late hours of Bangkok:
Don't go by Tripadvisor pictures. Never, never, ever again!
The budget hostel where we were to stay looked great (here it is) and it might have been workable for a while, but in the long run, it was was more of a potential "spirit-killer."
This was how our place looked before covid! Right now it's a warehouse of odds and ends.
There are old Christmas decorations strewn here and there, boxes of junk, and
maids that laugh all night "drinking with the boys" while you're trying your best to sleep.
But this place was on a major freeway! I feel like this kind of thing should be mentioned a lot more on rating websites. It was really awful to be facing a major highway and then on top of it to deal with other budget-travelers shouting up and down the stairs, half drunk.
So on that point, also be sure that you're with the right tier of traveler. There are distinguished travelers who will respect your mother's right to sleep and there are those who wont.
The rest of the time in BKK
I used our initial leg in Bangkok to refamiliarize myself with the mass rapid transit system (MRT) and the sky train. These are two different things, and if you mix them up, it can get you pretty confused about where you're going. Most times though, if you ask the nice lady or gent on the other side of the glass window where you buy tickets, things will be okay. But a good start is to know that you can't reach the underground railway line from the sky-train and vice versa. Sometimes they're connected but don't take this fact for granted.
The first call of duty was to get our train tickets sorted for Chiang Mai next day. From Chiang Mai we'd be traveling to Pai, an out-of-the-way hippy refuge suggested by one of my mom's clients. So we got up fairly early to do get our tickets for Chiang Mai ready. I got my bearings from Google and trying to be the upbeat traveling role-model that I always try to be when others are weak and lost - like my mom in this case - suggested we head up a highway next to which we had our room!
This was great and a real treat compared to South Africa where you always end up feeling traumatized by beggars and potential thugs every two meters. A nice girl helped us at one of the crossings. She was so cute! She had a bunny as a hair elastic tying her hair up. We asked her where the station was and she told us straight away. So we climbed up the stairway to the sky train.
The ticket lady told us to get off at Salad Daeng from whence we'd take the underground to Hua Lampong. That's the station where you organize all of your national railway tickets.
Which is something we luckily did early. Because seats were filling up. So much so in fact, that we didn't really get the seats we needed. My mom would have to sleep on the top bunk. Which involved a lot of climbing. Luckily for her, she's a fit 70 year old.
That done, I decided on a whim that we should see China town.
Which is where I'll pick up with you, my loyal followers, next time!!!
Thanks for Reading!
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