Although I had paid for two nights here, realising how far away I am from the city centre or even the nearest MRT station, I bit the bullet and spent an hour or more ploughing through websites trying to find a hotel in the centre of town that was cheap enough and yet still private, a task made a lot harder as it was the day before Valentines day and of course that means most are booked up weeks or months in advance.
I did manage it in the end, and went to go and take a shower to get wet feet again as the drainage problem in the room was even worse than I thought, and had I been more on the ball I could have used this as a way of trying to get a little compensation back from the hotel.
However before I could confirm the booking I also had to call up the banks and get the bars lifted off my cards, at least temporarily, which meant that I should at least be able to withdraw a little money in order to make the next few days much more bareable.
The last thing before packing up my rucksack and heading off to the nearest MRT station was to send emails to my friends here in Bangkok to let them know the change in my plans and to tell them where I will be staying for the next few days at least.
I found out the other reason why the hotel didnt want me to go to town last night as this morning their own driver quoted me 800 baht to take me into town, the same journey that cost me 350 on the way there last night and 300 coming back, so much for my hotel staff going above and beyond to extend the famous thai service to me!
After laughing that off I said that I would take a private taxi to the nearest MRT station for only 150 baht, though in the end the taxi driver wanting to make a better fare agreed to take me all the way to the hotel, right near the river at the other side of the CBD for only 250 baht, again showing how much I had already been ripped off ( and still probably was as the lonely planet guide show figures in single figures for crossing central Bangkok !!!), let alone the 800 I had been asked to fork out this morning from the hotel.
The area that the first hotel was in looked better in daylight, with some traditional touches and niceties that could not be seen during the nighttime and also lacking the barking dogs on the prowl.
There are definetly the rich and the poor areas of Bangkok and I passed places that were charging over 10,000 baht for a night almost opposite smaller guest houses that charged between 200-400 baht, my own hotel was only costing to cost me 550 baht per night, including tax.
It was nice to see plenty of things that in the next few days to come I would like to visit and the fact that it was minutes from a nearby Muay Thai boxing place was great as that was definetly one of the things I most wanted to see here, a night of live fighting where they put almost as much effort into the prematch ritual as they do in the actual combat.
An hour later I finally pulled up outside the hotel, only to be told that as I didnt have my reservation printed off that I could not check in,and to go away to the nearest internet cafe and print it off there then come back. Again, not quite the fabulous treatment that I had been expecting or wanting and despite the image of the room on the website being spotlessly clean the image that I got from the one in real life, and from the main reception and room was something else.
Thankfully the hotel restaurant served good cheap food, less than 100 a plate full, and there were plenty of massage parlours within walking distance and all offering between 150 and 250 for a full massage, barely half the price from the old crone back in the first hotel.
I have never liked being milked for money and the experience from that first hotel was nothing but, so despite paying for a night I was not going to use I will make a big saving on the massage, food, drink, internet and taxi costs so all in all I probably still came out about evens and ahead if I had made the mistake of staying for a third night.
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