Roach Motel

After a 13 hour bus ride, made longer by a broken down bus and the subsequent vehicle switch, we arrived in Bangkok. We went to Wendy House which we had heard was a really clean and nice guest house in Siam Square. We wanted to stay away from Kao San Road, for tonight at least, and were willing to pay a little more for the nice part of town. Wendy House was really cute...and really full. We asked if she could suggest another guest house and she sent us down the road to Muehpol Mansion (Ha! I haven't come across a bolder misnomer...). By this time it was late and we were exhausted. We went to the front desk and asked if there were rooms available. There were...for 700 baht. Now, this is way more than what we have been paying, in fact it's nearly three times more than what we have been paying. At that point though we didn't care. I was sick (bad chicken) and we were too tired to go anywhere else. We paid and even broke our rule of "check the room first, pay second".

We walked in to find a giant cockroach, in its last spasms of death, in the middle of the floor. The place was a dive. Any other day I would have marched downstairs and demanded a refund. Last night I cried a little and pulled out my portable sheet bag (like a sleeping bag but made of cotton) which I reserve for the more questionable accommodations.

This trip has had some wonderful moments but there have also been some low points...but that's traveling. We are over budget and running out of time. After a lot of discussion we have decided to change the itinerary and skip Vietnam. This breaks my heart because it was one of the main places I wanted to see, but it can't be done. We booked our airplane tickets last week online, only to find out that they will only issue paper tickets. What is this, 1985? Anyway, that means that we have to stay in one place long enough for my Mum to courier us the damn tickets. We decided that instead of quantity we would go for quality and really get to know Thailand. Not perfect but at this point in the game I would be up for a week in a five-star hospital...give me all the antibiotics, blood work and de-worming that modern medicine can muster.