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The Bangkok Vacation Part

This is the second part of my Asia vacation report. Check the first part here.

Uneventful but very nice flight with Thai. We had gotten so used to Chinese conformity that seeing the differently colored uniforms of the staff was a ray of sunshine, and they were all so friendly. Wonderful.

Arrival

We had been warned about taxi drivers trying to earn an extra dime (or ten) by not activating their taximeter (in other cultures, this is called "ripping off" but most Thai are so poor that this behavior is even understandable) but having just arrived at the airport, I didn't know what to watch out for. How were we supposed to recognize "the good taxis"? Well, we took a taxi to our hotel anyway, and ended up paying a fair price of around 450 Baht, including fees for tollways, which is 9 Euros and cheap for a 45-minute trip at least.

Still, during our vacation weran into many taxi drivers trying to give us a flat fee for taking us instead of driving by taximeter. When that happens, the offered amount is always higher than the taximeter amount. Always. Anyhow, sometimes it would take three or four attempts to find a "proper" taxi driver. Believe me, especially when even the English-speaking ones hardly say a word you understand, things can get exhausting.

We arrived at our hotel, the Khaosan Palace Inn, at around 7 PM. It was right in the middle of Khao San Road, the center of Bangkok backpacker tourism. It was almost 30°C even when we got to the hotel, and much more humid than Hong Kong had been. Tons of people on street, mostly foreigners and street vendors. The hotel was nice, rooms clean and with all the amenities you could expect for roughly 14 Euros per night (for both of us). But once more we first got a room with rather a wall than a view but when we asked to get another one the next morning it was not a problem.

 

The Language Barrier

It felt very good to be staying among foreigners, I can tell you. Not that we wanted to hang out with Germans; it was rather the being among others who were not from there. Just seeing the occasional Caucasian face made me feel much more at home, and I am not exactly proud of this. German history and all. But what aggravated it was the fact that the Thai speak even much worse English than the Chinese I had seen, and had a much worse accent. Consonants were almost omitted altogether, let alone the unbelievable intonation. Not even the sounds we're so used to in English and German are the same. What comes so natural to us when we say "uh-huh", for example, to me sounds more like moaning in Thai. We soon knew how to say "thank you" and stuff like that, but Thai is a different language world altogether.

General Perception of Bangkok

We experienced Bangkok to be colorful and peaceful. Not quite as clean as Hong Kong but still a nice city to be in, as long as you stayed away from downtown that looked pretty much the same as Hong Kong, or any huge-city downtown, for that matter. I think that also Bangkok as a city can be done in three days. It is way easier in Bangkok than in Hong Kong, however, to fill some days. Just make sure you have plan of what to do, even if it explicitly includes hanging out at a spa or pool.

The Wats

The city is full of monasteries (they're called "Wat" in Thai), and one that you should definitely check out is Wat Pho, South of the royal palace. Wat Pho is not only extremely beautiful and impressive, it also gives home to a very accredited massage school where you can get a Thai massage that you will probably never forget.

In case you have never received a Thai massage, be ready for a healthy amount of pain. The boys and girls that gave us one drilled their fingers and elbows into our muscles, and at several points I wanted to ask my masseur to ease up a little. I ultimately didn't, and you feel unbelievable once the massage is over. Promised. Oh, and don't be surprised that when you ask for a Thai full-body massage at Wat Pho, somebody leads you quite far, even out of the monastery into a side street. That's where the massage school is really located. It seems like the small Wat Pho building they have is just a prestige outpost.

The Babylon

If you're gay you have very probably heard of it. It is said to be the best, most luxurious, most famous or whatever gay sauna in the world, and friends of mine had highly recommended it to me. It is very close to the Austrian embassy, by the way. Makes you think, doesn't it? :)

Anyway, Babylon is actually a hotel, sauna and restaurant, and although it hardly met my expectations after all the praising I had heard, it is far from bad. We were given a tour by what I would call the queeniest person ever caught stuck in a man's body, and the hotel rooms are, although relatively expensive for Thailand, still affordable and very nicely set up and decorated. If you love gardens and exotic flowers, the more upscale and private rooms are very likely just your thing. We were told, by the way, that you were obviously welcome to bring guests home but that you were preferred not to bring street hookers. Not in these words, of course, but still.

Bargains

A word about how you can shop yourself to silliness. If you're looking for tailor-made clothes, e.g. suits, Thailand is definitely a place to get them at incredible rates. Not that I had anything made myself but the way street vendors offer these services, there must be something to it. It won't be Armani, as everybody guarantees you it'll be (I wonder if they have any idea what that word means) but I think it's safe to assume that the tailors will do a great job at tailoring pretty much anything to anyone's needs. Including Cirque du Soleil-like tents for the obese.

You get tons of food on the streets, and most of it is not only fine, it's great. If you like Thai food you will love the pad thai that you get almost everywhere. It tastes great and costs around 60 Baht, which is around 1.20 EUR. Try getting a full meal for that price in Germany. Or even just a starter.

Oh, by the way, if you're thinking about buying computer accessories or gaming consoles in Asia, I can't say I recommed it. In Hong Kong, the prices for the stuff you'll want are comparable to German prices so even dealing with the country limitations -- as far as they still exist -- isn't worth it, and in Bangkok it's actually almost the same. Facing the fact that you probably won't have any guarantee on your product, I'd say you leave it and order it somewhere cheap in Germany.

My Bangkok 101

Here's my Bangkok 101 so YOU get something out of all this as well:

1. Transportation and taxi: Taking a taxi is so cheap that unless you have a specific reason to do differently, you should rely on taxis. You can try taking a tuktuk just to see how boring and expensive it is, and how you'll be too tall to actually see anything. Just make sure that the taxi driver activates his taximeter, and you'll be fine. Ask right away whether he'll activate it. If he won't, he'll tell you a lump-sum price or just drive off without any comment. If he understands where you want to go and says "OK", you're fine to get in.
   What might help you is getting a card (some hotels have them) with all the touristy destinations written on them in English and Thai so that all you have to do is pointing at one.
2. Hotel room: Admittedly, this is rather a general hint than Bangkok-related but in my experience it has always paid off to ask for another room when I didn't like mine. Sometimes a different room costs extra but often the fee is way worth it if in exchange you get one you actually enjoy.
3. Street vendors: Unless you actually want to buy something, avoid eye contact and ignore them altogether. Personally, I have a hard time with that, especially because the Thai are extremely friendly. Of course this is exactly what vendors look out for, and some of them stick to you, no matter what you say and no matter how you're trying to say nicely that you'd prefer to be left alone. American politeness doesn't work here; forget it.
4. Diarrhoea and stuff: Don't drink tap water. Brushing your teeth is fine though. Food in restaurants is generally fine to eat, and so is most food sold on the streets. If you're likely to have digestive problems, you should watch out for refridgerated stuff like ice cream, milk shakes, and ice cubes.
5. The voltage in Thailand is 220 volts, and the German plugs fit, so you're fine with gadgets from Germany but check twice whether your American apparel works. Electrical shavers and notebooks are usually fine but, e.g., battery chargers often don't.

Thanks for reading this brief but hopefully informative report. The pictures are already online. Ask me for access codes if you're interested.

It's good to be back (although I admit we have been back for almost a month now).

The Hong Kong Vacation Part

This is the first part of Robert's and my Asia vacation report. We flew to Hong Kong on 22 December, then on to Bangkok on the 29th, and back to Frankfurt on 6 January, via Copenhagen.

You'll see that it's a very brief summary, and very subjective on top. But hey, it's my party, I'm gonna cry if I want to. You would cry, too, if it happened to you. :)

Choice of Travel Destination

In October, Robert and I had known each other for roughly only two months but at least I didn't have any inhibitions to take steps from there. As I had written previously the choice of moving in with each other was made not long thereafter, and we ended up doing that even before going on vacation together. In my opinion, the latter is crucial to every partner relationship because there is hardly anything that puts your relationship to a test as badly as a common place to live or, you guessed it, a vacation abroad.

So we had been thinking for a while about whether, and of course where, we wanted to go on vacation over Christmas and newyear's. There were virtually no limitations at the time as to where we'd go. We had more than two weeks to spend, so we could be brainstorming ourselves silly, and with Robert's connections to Lufthansa, chances were good we'd get a reasonable price at least for the flights. Sometimes I still marvel at the rebates that airline employees get at places like Club Med. But that's a different topic.

Now, where would we go? Our ideas were widely spread. Australia? Very nice idea but too hot in December/January. A car road trip from South to North California? Definitely a candidate. I have friends in the Northern US but there was no chance in hell that I'd be freezing my behind off in Massachusetts, sorry. Something cheaper, like in the Canary islands? Gran Canaria used to be a gay Mekka but things allegedly have changed, and honestly, even at the time it was big I could imagine much more exciting places to go to. When I go abroad my focus is not having things the same as at home.

I don't know any more how Asia came up but I think it was I who said that I had been wanting to travel to Hong Kong for years, and that because I loved Thai food and had seen extremely beautiful pictures about Thailand, Bangkok would be another city I'd love to see. He hadn't seen Hong Kong yet, Robert said, but Bangkok he had seen in 1993 and he'd love to travel there again.

In case you smirked at my remark about the connection of Thai food with wanting to travel to Thailand, I am convinced that much more often than not, people have the silliest motives to travel somewhere. Due to the Internet offering knowledge about pretty much anything and everything, I think that our perception of the world is both more wholesome and tainted.

Fact is, I had never been to Asia at all. Also, I had seen many things about it. Regardless of the fact that there are vast differences among the countries – e.g., Germans often have no clue about the differences between China and Japan; at least many have realized the difference between Chinese and Thai food –, the Internet makes it difficult at times to realize them. I had read and seen a lot about Asia, may it be respectable sources or articles and books about differences in mentalities, or YouTube videos like Hardgay, Japanese children's toilet training, or Sexy Bejing's „Lost in Translation“ video.

The decision to travel to Hong Kong and Bangkok came almost silently. Robert had asked a friend whether she could book us a convenient and reasonably priced set of flights, and when the pertaining quote was made it was clear that we both wanted to do it.

So the choice was made.

Strangely enough, we hardly did any other preparations other than booking hotels in both cities, the one in Bangkok actually the night before our flight to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong

The flight to Hong Kong was a Lufthansa flight, and we slept well, which is probably why we hardly had any jetlag symptoms. This is true for both intercontinental flights, by the way. Our hotel in Hong Kong, The Harbourview, was located directly at the sea but we had to switch rooms and pay about € 10 extra per day to actually get a room with harbour view. The one we got at first had the gorgeous view onto a dirty concrete wall and a black window front. Charming.


I'll be frank, we both didn't like Hong Kong too much, for various reasons. Don't get me wrong. What I am about to say is not meant to hurt anybody or any people, it is merely my/our perception of the vacation.

Hong Kong is an extremely impressive city, colorful, bright, with huge buildings, it's clean, peaceful, and you can party anytime, almost everywhere. Gay, straight, bi, ladyboys, transgender, you name it, you get it. But from what we saw during the seven days, we think that two days of Hong Kong are enough to see everything that matters and that defines the city. I say this because we think Hong Kong consists mostly of one thing. Shopping. I have never seen such a mass of shopping malls with such a mass of mediocre and ever-same crap.

Robert and I both like to shop, and we both had planned to go on vacation and shop ourselves stupid. Not that our suitcases would have held much more – weight-wise – but that had been our initial plan. But apart from a few audio CDs with JPop, nothing of what we saw in all the malls interested us. And even those we didn't buy. There were two groups of products, the usually (or sometimes more) expensive ones that are boring, and the cheap crap that you'll only buy when you're young and stupid, or drunk.
"But what about all the sites?!?" you might ask.


Yes, there is the giant bronze Buddha statue on Lantau island. Been there. Impressive (though not as impressive as I thought) but extremely touristy. By the way, if you're planning to go, make sure like the new day to go as early as you can, or you'll stand in lines for hours just to buy a ticket. And I am not exaggerating. My estimate is that some people actually stood in subsequent lines for roughly three hours to only get the tram up the hill. It seems like the Chinese don't have any problem with that. I, however, do.

And don't overestimate the whole statue experience. It's just a giant Buddha statue. [shrug]

What might be something for you if you're into fake tacky shit is the plastic tree of enlightenment that you'll see on your left on your way to the statue. That's so bad it's cool.

Expecting and hoping badly that things would be different at least on the outskirts, we went for a trip to Cheung Chau island and to Aberdeen, but we were disappointed. It was all the same to us, sometimes with smaller buildings and fisherman boats but always the same stuff to see and do. Walking around, eating and shopping.

Before I went to Asia I used to say I'm a buddhist. Now that I have seen what that means in Hong Kong, I am hesitant to say it any more. What I have seen in the temples in Hong Kong was just as flat as the whole shopping frenzy seemed to me. You see people burning and shaking incense sticks (and all temples reak of them), and lush statues everywhere, but it looked just as uninspired and uninspiring as the Christian churches look to me in Germany.

If you think that in Hong Kong you will get by with English because of the city's historical background of an English colony, you're partially right. You'll get by but don't expect meaningful personal encounters. Most Chinese people hardly speak more than the absolute minimum. Hotel and airline staff are different, of course, and you can order your food and drinks but that's it for the most part. Even trip booking seemed so cumbersome to me that I couldn't be bothered really.

I am in awe about the city's energy thirst though, for already the sheer mass of lights and air conditioning is overwhelming. It doesn't take long for you to stand in front of the side of a 50-storey building whose color you can hardly make out because of all the air conditioning.

Also, don't be surprised if you run into the same kinds of shop on an entire street. There are actually streets where almost nothing else but dried food is sold, then others with nothing but pets (and the most horrifying clothes for them, I tell you). Again others with electronica, and so on.

And you've got people everywhere. Every-effing-where. Usually walking veeeeery slooooowly in front of you, and somehow they manage to block entire 4-meter-wide sidewalks with two persons or sometimes, if they're very experienced, alone. However, there are well-organized and widely spread walkways, often located aside or in and through buildings. Walking is very common in Hong Kong (if you can stand walking at half your regular speed).

But actually, sadly, this is pretty much everything I remember clearly about Hong Kong.

When we boarded the plane on the 29th of December to fly to Bangkok, I cannot say either of us regretted it. It was time. Actually, it had been time for days, and at the time Robert and I agreed that Hong Kong could -- rather should -- be done in two days, three tops. Keep that in mind if you're planning to go for the first time. Make sure you have arranged for ways to get out of the city for good, not on the weekend though because that's when all the Hong Kongians do the same, and you'll end up standing in line again.

The Apartment Make-Over

Most of you have very probably reached an age at which you have at least once in your life marveled at your subjective speed of time passing by. You stop, take a breath, and realize that you think you've experienced so many things in such short time that you wonder how much longer you have to live, even if you're still "young".

Now is one of those moments for me.

About a month ago I had told you about my move within in Frankfurt but all this already seems so far away that I don't know how fast I had to run to get here. I have moved -- actually, it's been more than two moves as Robert's move was on the agenda as well, and there is extra effort on top when you deal with bringing together two households.

At the same time, ironically enough, it feels like I have been standing still in the past months, not achieved anything. I am torn between speed and stillness, between wanting to get shit done and now and then thinking that I want nothing more than being able to sleep in.

I think it is safe to say that Robert and I have done a great job with the move. In the two weeks subsequent to it, we got order into stuff, threw out a lot, sorted things for a flea market sale some time in Spring, bought and assembled furniture, etc. etc. And then, just when we had come back from our Asia vacation on 7 January and had packed away our suitcases, immediately continued with the renovation. On Thursday we set up a few things such as my Fritz!Box and the local network including a USB network printer, on Friday we went out and bought paint, accessories and more furniture, and then we spent Saturday and Sunday painting the sh*t out of the bedroom, the hallway and the kitchen. Then the last weekend we painted the living-room on Saturday, and on Sunday we put together a light fixture there that we basically copied from this IKEA hack.

You should see the colors; we think they are amazing. Whatever room I am going to describe, please keep in mind that the ceilings are all still white (even though it's a slightly creamy white called "Umbraweiß"). The hallway will welcome you with a mixture of bright orange and tomato red. I had gotten the idea from a friend of mine from Munich whose orange, I believe, however, was not quite as bright as this. The colors are straight in your face and extremely warm.

The bedroom now comes in two variations of green, a lighter one (still pretty direct though) and a darker and very green tone. In the color palette we were shown they're called Oase 130 and Oase 150. The bedroom now has a wonderfully calm atmosphere, great for sleeping and relaxing.

The kitchen now for the main parts has the same tomato red tone as the hallway, with two walls (with door opening and window in them) is also creamy white. I am thrilled by the thought of painting the kitchen in a color inspired by a grocery as basic as the tomato!

The living-room has the most "unquiet" touch of all, although all tones are "doe-brown" ("Rehbraun"), ivory, and white. Especially in this room we have done an outrageously good job in cutting lines between the different colors, even on the same wall. The room is now unbelievably more cozy than before when it was plain white. What's still missing there, however, is a fitting curtain that we'd like to pull shut especially when it's dark outside and the window casts a big black cold hole into the room.

Oh, and sorry for not posting any pictures of the new apartment. I wasn't able to take any as I am not at home but at a hotel because of a two-day conference. Finally, here, sitting here in my hotel room I find the time to write this entry. Weird and at the same time understandable, isn't it?

And one last thing:

Robert and I are currently wading our way through the approximately 1,200 pictures we took during out 16-day vacation in Hong Kong and Bangkok over the holidays and newyear's. I will write about that as soon as I find the time to.