Thailand Trip, March 2025
I’m a retired farang in my early 60’s married to a mid-50’s Thai woman I met in 1998. I was previously married to a Filipina for ten years while in the US Navy (two kids). Nid and I have no children. She was an accountant until she married me. I retired a few years ago; my wife and I divide our time between the USA and Thailand. Nid has a 2-storey, 4-bedroom house near Korat that her mom gifted to her; my mother in-law still lives there along with her oldest son. My sister in-law keeps her old Toyota at the house near Korat and we have use of it when needed. We also spend time in my sister in-law’s condo in Bangkok.
We started our Thailand trip in Bangkok, the temperature is entirely bearable in February. But this year the air pollution is terrible; hazy enough to obscure the view of buildings a few hundred meters away. I spend most of the time in the condo reading and surfing the internet; my sister in-law works while my wife occasionally shops. Kind of boring. The condo pool temperature this time of year is rather low as most of it sits in shadow. I got used to it in a few minutes; my wife gave up after a few minutes. The nearby massage parlors are still 350 baht for a one hour massage, with the occasional offer for extra services that I decline.
I bought a pizza from Dominoes at the On Nut Plaza (formerly People’s Plaza). I picked out a thin crust “American style” pizza believing they could not screw it up. The crust was good, but the toppings were rather bland. The chicken wings were also boring. Just more reason to know that I am better off with Thai food than half baked attempts at duplication of American food here. McDonald’s in Bangkok is almost the same as America, but buying American fast food in Thailand when better Thai food is available at a far lower price, just does not make any sense. The Seoul BBQ is closed now. The fresh market across the street from Big C is still good for simple ready to eat meals.
After a few days in the Bangkok air pollution, my eyes started to itch and became swollen. An anointment from the local chemist relieved the itch in a day. I think taking the bus to Korat helped even more.
But Korat has its own pitfalls. While relaxing in my wife’s house, I noticed a large hornet (3 – 4 cm) buzzing around. Hours later I was stung twice in the back of my neck while outside. People in the USA were all abuzz about the so-called “Japanese Murder Hornets” last year. The stings stopped hurting in about ten minutes; seems they’re not so tough after all. Later I located the hornet nest; they were just little things about the size of yellow jackets.
But my nerdy wife refuses to give me any of “the good stuff” to relieve the minor pain. What are we in Thailand for anyway? I’m also forbidden to try out any sort of THC even though we are right next to a pot shop. Nid’s reasoning is that her mom is a retired teacher and has a reputation to uphold, so her son in-law is not allowed to go to a pot shop. We did check out prices at a pot shop in Pattaya later on; I didn’t buy any.
The toilets at my wife’s house were flushing slowly, so we got the septic tank pumped. It was the usual truck pulling up with hose to suck the contents out. In Washington State (USA) it would have cost me $300 for this service. Here in Korat it cost 150 baht ($4.55).
After a few weeks in Korat, my wife decided to go to Nang Ram beach on a Thai Navy Base. It was a four hour train ride from Bangkok, then a short tuktuk ride to the beach. The beach is well maintained with lots of shade trees. We rented a couple of beach chairs for 40 baht each. It is mostly Thais at the beach.
After Nang Ram beach we took the train for an hour to Pattaya Beach; she had never been there and neither had I. We got rides on a scooter (150 baht each) to the hotel. It is bad enough watching those little suicide machines zipping around in Bangkok while I’m in a cab or tuktuk. Sitting behind the driver on a scooter is scary. My feet rubbed against other vehicles twice before we got to the hotel. Never again!
Pattaya was nice though. We stayed at the Payaa Hotel for about $70 per night. While walking around, my wife looked at the Thai restaurants and pronounced the food there as “expensive and inauthentic”; I was not going to argue as it was most likely geared towards the tourists, and their preference for less spicy food. At another area we found small Thai food stalls crowded together, wife said it was “authentic but expensive”. We ended up at McDonalds; Nid likes McNuggets. It was nearly the same as in the United States. We also tried out a Pizza Hut at the mall; my pizza was boring, her spicy spaghetti with shrimp was very good. I’m thinking that the Thais make their American food as bland as possible because the “weak white man” cannot handle the spices that every Thai child takes for granted.
A brief pass through Walking Street was like I imagined it would be. Less crowded than I remember Patpong from 15 years ago, but much noisier. The bargirls were mostly in the street trying to lure customers into the bars which seemed to be rather unfilled. Some of the bargirls were aggressive. I noticed that the least attractive women had more skin exposed. I kept close to my wife and held her hand thinking the bargirls would leave me alone; they did.
I got a massage at a parlor on Soi 4; 300 baht for 60 minutes. The tables were very close together and separated by curtains. The massage was fairly good, entirely legit. But it ended up being the most expensive massage I ever had. My sandals were missing when I got dressed to leave. It seems another client took them. The staff apologized and gave me some poorly fitting rubber sandals to wear home. About ninety minutes later I got a phone call saying they had my sandals, but I had already purchased more sandals for 1600 baht. I got my old sandals back. The ride back to the Pattaya bus station in a quad cab pickup was 60 baht.
A week later we took a five hour train ride from Bangkok to Ban Krut. We got the cheapest room at the Suan Ban Krut Beach Resort for 1100 baht per day. It has good AC, a firm mattress, high water pressure and a small refrigerator, but no microwave. A western style breakfast is included. The wi-fi is unreliable. On our second day there was a power outage early in the morning for several hours; the water was out also.
The Ban Krut beach is one of the cleanest I’ve seen in Thailand; much cleaner than Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. The shore break is very mild and I did not step on any rocks in the ocean. The water had a green tint to it our first day there; from algae I think. The day after we arrived there was a rain storm and higher waves at the beach which bought in lots of trash. The resort has people who clean up the beach, so it remained clean. The resort’s 1.5 meter deep swimming pool is pleasant. It has showers and clean toilets.
The small restaurants near the Ban Krut Resort have cheap and authentic Thai food. I did notice that the English menu at one place had higher prices than the Thai menu.
I tried the Dairy Queen at a Big C in Bangkok. I think they use actual ice cream; it was thicker and colder than the stuff in the USA. USA Dairy Queen uses a product that cannot be called ice cream as it is only 5% milk fat, not the 10% or more required.
Haircuts. After 45 days my beard started to look rather wild as I did not bring my trimmer. I also got tired of my wife calling me grandpa. The barber shop at Big C looks like anything other barber shop I went to in the USA, but with extra hair on the floor. I’m accustomed to using the Navy barber shops where they have a vacuum attachment on the clippers; loud but neat. This place wrapped a large cloth around my neck and torso as usual, but lots of hair fell onto me and the floor. The barber (she looked like Brianna Hildebrand in Deadpool) used a hair dryer to blow the hair off of my neck. Weird but fine. Price was about $4.00.
I went to Wat Arun Temple with my wife and sister in-law. 200 baht for farangs. It is crowded, but not Walking Street crowded. Lots of tourists, mostly Thais, some of whom were dressed in rented traditional (I think) costumes for photographs around the temple. The temple steps were steep and without railings, so we decided not to climb very far.
There is a new Korean BBQ Buffet at Lotus On Nut. Instead of gas or electrical grills, the grill pit sunk into the table has a container of what looks like small red-hot bricks that put out sufficient heat to grill meat for at about an hour. The wait staff walks by with these small pans of hot death held by tongs. I could feel the heat as they walk by and recoiled each time. When they passed by I would flash back to my time in the Navy and avoiding hot steam piping in the engine room. The tables were not equipped with the intrusive and noisy vent ducts, but there was little odor other than the grilled meat. We will eat there again.
My sister in-law and I were napping in her condo (9th floor out of +30) when the March 28th Myanmar earthquake started. I had experienced earthquakes in the USA and Japan before, but not from inside a tall building. The building swayed and made cracking noises; it was rather frightening. We dashed out of the room and went down the emergency exit. My sister in-law descended the stairs much faster than I did and called back a few times to make sure I was still leaving the building. I was in shorts and carrying my sandals and shirt. But I was better dressed than some of the others that ran out of the building.
I calmed down completely when I reached the parking lot and saw that the building was not falling apart. My sister in-law took much longer to calm down as the condo is her home and she is several years away from paying off the mortgage. This condo did not lose any water out of its pool as far as I could tell, unlike some other places. I thought there was not nearly enough people evacuated from the building until I realized that most of the occupants would have been at work or school.
There were many people in various stages of undress; underwear, pajamas, etc. One half-dressed old farang was trying to comfort his two young sons. I had my wallet and cell phone so I offered to buy him some treats. The boy refused the offer, but accepted some water from me after I went to the 7-Eleven on the first floor of the complex. Several hours later things appeared to return to normal and I would not have known there was an earthquake unless I had experienced it myself.
My wife was in another part of the city picking up her niece from the bus station. It took her two hours to get home in a cab due to the bad traffic and the need to detour around the Chatuchak building that collapsed. She was close enough to see the dust from the collapse; she thought it was a fire. Fortunately, she was not in a Skytrain or subway, both of which halted service for several hours
A couple of hours later I was able to gain access to the condo. The damage to my sister in-law’s condo was limited to superficial cracking of the wall plaster Later on we were told that the building was inspected and deemed safe; the damaged units would be repaired by the condo management free of charge. In the end, we were hardly affected by the earthquake.
Out flight home to Seattle had an eight hour layover in Incheon. We paid about $60 for six hours in a travel hotel in the airport. It was worth the price. Each time I have transferred flights at Incheon, airport staff had people cutting the security line for incoming flights that were about to leave. I prefer to pay to sleep in a bed during a longer layover than to miss a connection.
Clearing immigration and customs in Seattle was quick. I was asked about our purpose for the trip, but not if we had anything to declare. I was not looking forward to seeing how much I would have to pay for the $1000 in gold I brought back, and I never found out.
It will be a while before our next trip to Bangkok. My wife wants to wait until she gets her alien card renewed instead of traveling with a nearly expired card in this awful USA political climate. She says will never be an American citizen.
The author of this article can be contacted at : ranb40@yahoo.com
