Onwards!
So, we just checked into another hotel for a couple of nights while we look for an apartment.
The place we just left was called 3sis Bed & Breakfast (3sisbedandbreakfast.com). It was super nice, with awesome furnishings and a beautiful open lobby with lots of different sitting areas. There’s lots of great little touches, like a long rectangular koi pond and teak furniture. The hotel offers free WiFi access and cable, and you get two free bottles of water a day. The actual sleeping area is behind the 3sis restaurant that serves a variety of foods, including some western dishes like club sandwiches and cheese burgers. We got free breakfast with our stay, and the french toast is straight up bitchin! I think probably the best french toast I’ve ever had. The staff is very friendly, and speak really good english, and you can register for your stay online which is rad. We paid about $30USD/night, which is way cheap for what we got. The hotel is located across the street from the Wat Chedi Luang, which is, like all the temples I’ve seen, amazingly beautiful.
Now we’re staying at a place called Charcoa (charcoa.com), which was kind of hard for us to find. It’s located on some of the back sois (avenues) in the north-eastern corner of the old city, near the Rasta Art Bar. We had to take two red taxis and a tuk-tuk to get here, since there was a language barrier it was kind of hard to express exactly where we wanted to go. It seems to be a really cool place to stay, the staff are super-friendly. I had a short conversation with one of the guys working here (I think his name is Chris) about how we were looking for apartments and he said he’d look some up for us, to which I replied was super-nice but not necessary. There’s free WiFi and cable here, plus the fridge is stocked with all sorts of stuff (that you have to pay for), and it costs about the same as 3sis.
Something I’ve noticed while in Thailand that is very different from the states – you’re not supposed to flush toilet paper! There are these little sanitary bags beside the toilets that you’re supposed to put used toilet paper in and then you put that in the trash can. At first I thought the bags were just for women’s sanitary products, but I just looked it up online and the t.p. goes in there too! I think it’s got something to do with septic systems that haven’t been updated to be able to handle toilet paper. Ooops… I haven’t been doing that. Glad none of the toilets have back up on me yet!