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Taking a Steam Train Out of Bangkok

A lot of time people feel the need to get out of Bangkok and catch a break from the constant buzz of traffic, the crowds, the highways, and the cement. Oh God, the cement. Some people go to great lengths to catch a break, like a friend who will gladly travel all night in a crowded minivan and half a day on a boat to spend one night on a beach. I’m a bit ~~lazy~~ more pragmatic, in that if I leave town, it needs to be easy, cheap, fast, and worthwhile. A few months […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:52+00:00Bangkok, Thailand, Transport, Travel|5 Comments

The Stunning Furniture of the P. Tendercool Workshop

A few years ago I wrote a story for CNN Travel about a cool little soi that had an antique studio, an art gallery, and a store that sold amazing tables. Were it not for the constant 30° heat, it would be easy to think you were in a lost corner of New York. I got know the owner of the table store over the years, and recently was afforded the opportunity to drop by his studio to see some of his new creations. I know what you’re saying – tables don’t seem that exciting, but […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:53+00:00Asia, Bangkok, Thailand|0 Comments

Bangkok/Thailand vs. Tokyo/Japan

Every high school kid has an idea for a dream career that probably won’t come true. My friends wanted to be singers or dancers or actors or film directors (I went to a performing arts school, obviously), but my dream was a bit odd. I wanted to move to Japan and live in a little hut and learn how to make swords. Surprisingly, sword-making isn’t easy to learn in small-town Canada, so I made up for it by taking Japanese language courses, reading Japanese history books, and studying Japanese martial arts (stop laughing, I was surprisingly good). At […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:53+00:00Asia, Bangkok, Travel|15 Comments

My Secret to Dealing With Bangkok’s Constant Protests

As it does on a seemingly regular basis, Thailand’s protest season has started up again. As of today, the prime minister is in an unstable position and facing threats and calls for her to step down; boisterous, abusive mobs on both sides of the political divide are making threats to individuals and sometimes even attacking them for completely fabricated reasons; mobs have stormed several government ministries; and there’s a general air of uneasiness and behind-closed-door-edness in the air. This kind of thing has been going on for years now, and used to really upset me. I used to […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:53+00:00Bangkok, Current Events, Politics, Thailand|0 Comments

Can Thailand’s Tour Guides Save Themselves?

After living in Bangkok for so long I sometimes forget how lost I was when I first got here. As I wrote in 2001 when I first arrived: “Walking down streets I can’t remember past landmarks I don’t recognize to order food I can’t pronounce.” But now that I’m comfortable here all of that is forgotten – except when I travel out of Thailand. If you relish the raw unfamiliarity of making it on your own in a strange land, more power to you, but I got that out of my system a long time ago. Now when […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:54+00:00Bangkok, Thailand, Travel|9 Comments

Bangkok’s Biggest Graffiti

Another week, another bike ride. Following on my previous post where I mapped (probably) all of the future rail routes in Bangkok, I decided to have a bit of fun and get creative with my next ride. Well…more creative than normal. Making routes around Bangkok in Google Maps is something that I really like doing – it’s a matter of using the map view to find a rough route from A to B, and then zooming in to refine the route using satellite view and street view to find short-cuts and obstacles you can’t see on […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:55+00:00Bangkok, Biking, Transport|0 Comments

Visiting a Thai Hospital for a Quick Stitch-Up

So as I often do, I headed out for a bike ride with some friends today. I was going to meet them at Wong Wian Yai BTS station and take a new route down to the Gulf of Thailand for a bit of exploring and hopefully un-rained-on riding. However, as luck would have it the trip ended up being cancelled before it even started and I ended up laying on a gurney in a hospital getting stitches in one of the most cringe-worthy places you can imagine that’s not on your torso. I’ve been in Thailand so long […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:55+00:00Bangkok, Biking, Health, Thailand|0 Comments

Meanwhile, in Bangkok: Those Are Some Hairy Legs, Ma’am

I don’t think there’s any way I can write this without sounding slightly sexist, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway for discussion. It’s probably more of a cultural issue, come to think of it, but let me pose a query: do you think women should shave their legs? It’s an open-ended one, for sure, and one’s answer will probably take on shades of culture, femininity, pride, sexual politics and even religion, depending on who answers. Be that as it may – the culture I grew up in was one where a woman with hairy legs […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:55+00:00Asia, Bangkok, Culture, Meanwhile in Bangkok...|15 Comments

Finally, a (Mostly) Accurate Map of Bangkok’s Transit Future

Over the past few years I’ve become quite interested in what lies behind the scenes in Bangkok, most especially the plans for the city’s transit system. The existing train routes are embarrassingly inadequate for a city the size of Bangkok, but there are big plans in place. For years now I’ve been trying off and on to find a good map that lays it all out in a realistic fashion, but it’s been difficult. So, I decided to make my own damn map on Google Maps based on a combination of maps, diagrams, and websites across the web.

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Greg2018-03-23T03:22:04+00:00Bangkok, Transport|90 Comments

Do You Live More Than 2km From a Bangkok Rail Route?

When visiting friends ask me how Bangkok is laid out and what the best way to get around is, I tell them one thing: buy cards for the BTS (skytrain) and MRT (subway), fill ’em with cash, and you’re golden. Bangkok is a city that – at least since the BTS opened in 1999 – has expanded, grown and evolved very much in line with the routes that the electric trains take, as many cities do. But I also usually tell my friends that, unless they want to be particularly adventurous in Bangkok, almost everything they could need […]

Greg2016-11-17T15:47:57+00:00Bangkok, Transport|0 Comments