Last night we stayed in a hotel that cost us about 375 baht each. There were no blankets on the beds – only thin towels. This made us laugh.
After two rides on tuk tuks that we are certain caused the strange coughs and tickles we’ve felt in our throats this evening, we scoured the road for a new place to stay. Tonight, we are staying at a hotel just across the street. We found it much quieter than our room from last night, which was – according to Pepper, since I passed out as soon as I hit the pillow – livened up with the shouts, honks and wild music from Khao San Road below. At this hotel there are, in fact, real blankets on the beds as well as a large mirror embedded into a beautiful example of Thai carving. The fan above the bed rotates in lazy circles, delivering just the right amount of ventilation, and the mattresses are extremely soft and spongy, almost like a Tempurpedic, but we dare not hope. The price is about 110 baht cheaper than the place we stayed in last night, coming at about 8 USD each.
There is no hot water. We learned this fact from another foreigner, who was asking the lady at the front desk if it existed just as we were coming around the corner to tell her we would take the room. She told us to go around the corner of the alley to test the faucet and gauge the temperature for ourselves before committing to the room we had, 30 seconds before, been certain we would take. We followed her pointed finger into a dark, snaking alley, illuminated at the end by the light from a raging open air street bar and, after a bit of searching, found the rusty faucet embedded in a concrete wall. We tested it and deemed it quite a refreshing wake up call. This made us laugh, too.