68. THAILAND III

Just a 2-hour train ride later and I arrived at the Malaysia - Thai border for my 6th visit to the beautiful country of Thailand. I did not really arrive there with any plans on my mind and I ended up staying in 3 different cities for a total of 6 weeks:

1. Hat Yai:

The city of Hat Yai in Songkhla province is located in the very South of Thailand and just a 60 min drive away from the Malaysian border. Its a quite popular spot for tourists from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesians who enjoy Thai food, massages and markets here. I stayed there for 10 days and had a really pleasant time full of good food (fried chicken is one of the best I ever had there, 3rd best after Taiwanese and Korean), extended walks around the walkable city center and the last days of my busy work schedule. I really enjoyed the city's architecture and kindness of people there too, make sure to have a stop here on a possible stopover from Thailand to Malaysia or the other way round :)

2. Bangkok:

The major part of my stay in Thailand this time! It was my 7th visit to this iconic city and I already wrote a lot about it in other posts. This time I just wanted to stay for a month in one of the outer suburbs and visit my friend Philip and his wife Kate. I actually ended up staying in Nonthaburi, a town next to Bangkok, but my condo was just next to the border of the city of Bangkok. I enjoyed my time there so much, Bangkok and surroundings has endless stuff to do, explore, eat, try experience and visit. I visited several places in the center of Bangkok, enjoyed endless delicious meals with Philip, had hours of long night walks around my hood and did a day trip to the coast around Si Racha.

On top of that a ladyboy removed a tooth against my will! :D I went to a dentist complaining about some tooth pain and after a longer conversation with the transgender dentist she told me that she would have a quick solution for me (Google translator did not do a good job there). I understood she would do some filling and after a 30 min treatment I realized on my walk back home that one of my wisdom tooth is missing. That caused a lot of blood and pain for a few days, which set a break for my Bangkok plans for some time :D

I actually enjoyed my stay in Bangkok so much that I decided to set a first (or second?) home base there. My plan is to manage a 5-year-long term visa and rent an apartment on yearly contracts. But that's a topic for my next post.

3. Khon Kaen

In 2022, 3 years ago, I visited Khon Kaen in Isan, where I volunteered in an orphanage. I decided to visit that orphanage and Khon Kaen again to see how things changed and travel a bit around Isan province. Philip joined me on that 4 day adventure. We took a flight from Don Mueang, picked up a rental car at the airport and started exploring. We had quite eventful days meeting a colleague, hiking around a dinosaur national park, eating everything we could find in Khon Kaen , visiting the orphanage and catching up with Jick.

In 2025 my style of "traveling" really changed a lot. 4 star hotels & more expensive Airbnbs instead of Couchsurfing, rental cars & taxis instead of hitchhiking, longer staycations instead of crazy overland itineraries and not really thinking about money at all instead of strictly traveling on 500 USD a month. It took time to get used to those new comfortable surroundings, but I am still more than happy with the way the other 6 years of traveling the world happened :D Things in life change at a certain point and honestly I am more than surprised that my body and soul endured that old travels style before for like 6 years :D