Are you wasting your life?

When you get up in the morning, do you feel like you are one day older yet not a step closer to what you have spent your life dreaming you could do? Do you feel like you are just working for the paycheck? Do you feel like you are in a self-made prison? Do you wish you had the guts to call things as they are? I felt that way for a very long time.

OK lives

In many ways there was nothing wrong with our lives. Jammie and I had respectable, sought-after jobs. We had wonderful, supportive friends. We lived in a fun little college town in Northern California. We made decent money for a young couple. We were active in our communities. On the surface, our lives looked fine. If life continued as it was, we could really settle down, live comfortably, start a family and raise kids who would repeat the cycle.

The burning desire

But for years we had harbored a will to do something bold and fresh. Something that wasn’t just about a paycheck, benefits and water cooler conversations… about going through the motions. Something that would change our lives completely.

The secret plan

We knew what it was and for years we had secretly been talking about it: a trip around the world. But not just any trip. This would not be just a vacation. It would be an extended trip. A long-term adventure where we helped other people through service projects. This would be something idealistic. Something radical. Something completely, utterly life-changing that launched us on an international, meaning-filled life of service for years to come.

Every time we talked about it we got more excited. We knew this could change everything.  And every time we put off the trip off we grew more frustrated.

Enough is enough

In the fall of 2012, Jammie and I decided that we could not wait any longer. We simply could not put off our plans any more. If we didn’t take the step now, life would make it harder and harder to escape and we would just grow old, fat and frustrated bemoaning the lives we wished we’d pursued.  We simply could not let that happen.  We made a pact:  “We are doing this and we are doing this now!”

ACTION!

We did all the scary stuff as fast as we could so we wouldn’t back out. We told those closest to us of our plans. Job resignation letters were drafted, re-drafted, signed and delivered. We sold, gave away or dumped a ton of stuff that we had collected over the years. We bought round-the-world tickets. And we got on a plane.  This was it!

Five months in… 

We are now one month into living in Buenos Aires (city #2 of our Bangkok-Buenos Aires-Berlin-Bombay tour) and starting the  fifth month of our year.  We are starting to adjust to our new life. I am not going to pretend that we like everything.  We often miss family and friends.  I could do without the nightly mosquito bites and I could kill for some decent Mexican food.  But for the most part life has improved drastically.

I could spend several posts listing all the ways our lives are better but for now I can say this with all honesty:  For the first time in years it feels like everything I used to dream of doing is still possible.  I walk around unbelievably excited about life.  I am no longer as cynical.  I don’t roll my eyes when I hear people talk about their lives being happy.  I am happy.  And I am rapidly gaining perspective on how I want to live the rest of my life.

Here are some things I have learned:

Don’t waste your life thinking things will change – Part of what kept us from taking the bold step to get on a plane and follow our dreams was the vague feeling that things would change if we just put in a little more time. Maybe things would change with a little more money… or a more adventurous week of vacation time or a slightly better job. The truth was that none of those things would really change anything. Every little step we took on the same conventional path confirmed the obvious: more of the same would lead to a lifetime of boredom and regret.

Don’t waste your life thinking that “benefits” are a valid reason to stay in a job – Medical, dental, paid time off, growing retirement funds… we couldn’t just walk away! Or so we thought. But the golden hand cuffs were surprisingly easy to shake off when we realized that they were standing between us and doing what we really wanted with our lives. Security is fine but not if if means being handcuffed securely to a suboptimal life!

Don’t waste your life dreading risk – Within two weeks of landing in Bangkok we were offered four jobs between the two of us. We were not interested in taking them just then but we did the financial math just for fun anyway and the reward for shaking off the golden handcuffs was clear immediately: If we were to get jobs we could easily save over twice what we had been saving in the US. So much for our risk-averse golden handcuff thinking!

It was already clear that this world was full of opportunities and that risks where never quite as scary once you took them.  The rewards of action are great.  Everyone’s circumstances are different but don’t make the mistake of living your life dodging risk.

Don’t waste your life worrying about acquiring stuff - Traveling has taught us a lot of valuable lessons but one of the most important is this:  acquiring more “stuff” is one of the most pointless things we do in life.  Jammie and I ended up donating a ridiculous amount of our possessions to our local thrift store when we left Northern California.  I mean it was crazy. These were mostly things that had cost quite a lot to buy.  And in the end it was all just stuff… stuff that was in the way of us and a better, freer life.  This stuff didn’t add value; if anything it was a hassle, a nuisance.  The hours we spent giving or throwing it all away have taught me one thing as we walk past shop windows around the world: Keep walking.

Don’t waste your life chasing the American Dream – The house, the car, the white picket fence.  Keeping up with the Joneses is less and less attractive when you realize that they are upside down on their house, their possessions own them and living life chasing the American dream has them tied down and miserable, running faster and faster on the hamster wheel while their finite days on Earth slip away.  The American dream is not what it is cracked up to be. People should get over it.

Let’s end with some good news:  It is never too late to make a change… to make the jump.  If you are wasting your life, the time to stop is right now.  Right this second.  Stop it.  Seriously.  Don’t rationalize away this moment.  If you are tempted to do so, accept this absolute truth: This post was written for you.

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By the famous Reclining Buddha in Bangkok's Wat Pho temple

Maybe you feel the way we did before my wife Jammie and I decided to take a year to travel the world. Life felt entirely too cluttered. Our daily schedules were full of important obligations, useless time wasters, emergencies and commutes. Our apartment was cluttered with a bunch of stuff we never used. All the clutter got in the way of life.

Clutter consumed our lives with the unimportant. It distracted us from more important and meaningful pursuits. It was so hard to focus because our schedules were impossible and there was just too much junk surrounding us, fighting for attention.

The solution

This round-the-world trip (3 months each in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Berlin and Bombay) has been a godsend. In a way, it has given us a clean slate. We’ve been able to get rid of the clutter.  Here’s how this has happened and why I am absolutely convinced travel allows the new you to emerge:

Less stuff to carry

At first glance, airline luggage limits are a pain. It was frustrating to have to obsess so much about what we really needed to bring on the trip. We could only take one 50 lb check-in bag each. We had to make some difficult decisions.  What did we take and what did we leave?  What was nice but not necessary? What did we really need?  These were hard questions as we were leaving for a whole year.  I dreaded leaving something behind that I would really need and then have to buy again.  (And yes, there were a number of these items that we did leave behind only to have to re-buy in Bangkok.)

Now that we are here in Bangkok though, it is really fun looking around at our apartment. We basically only have what we need. There is a sparse, zen-like feel to the place. Our stuff doesn’t stress me out the way our belongings did in our apartment in Northern California.

Less in the daily schedule

I used to be the king of over-commitment. I had a full workload at my job and on top of that I would pack business mixers, various community club commitments, volunteer work, a busy social schedule, etc. Cutting all that out with this trip has been one of the most liberating experiences of my life.  The new you that travel allows can really be whomever you want.  Your schedule is your own.  This has been an amazing realization.

Less forced upon you

I want to drill down here and address meetings specifically. Meetings are often a waste of time. We all know this. But between work and other organizations that we are part of, most of us spend a lot of our time frustrated in nonproductive gabfests that go nowhere. This changes when you travel because the new you can say no before meeting creep sets in. You make the calls.  Did you feel as though your schedule controlled you back home?  The new you doesn’t need to put up with that.

Less needed to survive

Money can also be clutter. We need it, sure. But if I think back to life in Northern California and all the ways I ended up spending money, I find it shocking. Life now is more streamlined. No car insurance, no gas expenses, far less spent on the necessities (our monthly budget for all our expenses here in Bangkok is about $600).  The new you really does not need to keep up with the Joneses because you have left the Joneses at home with their white picket fence.

I could go on and on.  The longer Jammie are here in Thailand, the more we meet people that left Europe and the US years ago to live here and redefine their lives.  Their new approaches to life are more deliberate, more thought through than what they endured at home.  Travel allows this.  The new you is what you make it.

What is the first thing you would change about your life and schedule if you were on a long-term trip?  What would the new you look like?  I would love to hear in the comments!

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Bjorn Karlman

Bangkok, Thailand

Chillin' on an Express Boat...

I love Bangkok.  It is one of the most amazing cities I have ever experienced.  But as with most great cities, traffic is a problem. One way to get around this is to get creative with your choice of Bangkok transportation. One of my favorites is the Express Boat on the Chao Praya River. It is fast, it is fun and there’s an amazing view of the city. Here’s a video I put together on the basics plus a few steps below on how to get from A to B using this form of Bangkok transportation:

1) Decide where you want to go.  Each of the stops are both numbered and named and there is a map of the river at each stop.  Express Boats go very regularly so there won’t be much of a wait (an average of 5-10 minutes)

This screen shot was captured on my phone while we were on the river...

2)  Board the Express Boat quickly when it arrives.  You have to be ready exactly when the boat arrives or you will be left behind.  As you can see from the video, the staff are loud and adamant about the fact that they are on a schedule.  Don’t mess with them.  Just board and move into the boat as quick as you can unless you want to get yelled at.

3)  Pay your fare.  Depending on where you are going you will pay 10 – 30 baht (the upper end is just over $1.00 USD).

4)  Enjoy the ride. The Express Boat has offered me the best panoramic views of Bangkok so far.  Even as pure sight seeing, this is a lot of fun (and cheaper than other more touristy tour options).

5)  Keep track of where you get off.  As you approach each stop, look out for the sign with the name of the stop and the number.  This way you won’t miss your stop.

6)  Hop off quickly.  As you can see from the video, hustle is key on the Express Boat.  Get with the program and make sure you don’t hold up the line…

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Bjorn Karlman

Bangkok, Thailand

Here's what I gave the Thai embassy in Laos

The food, the smiles, the sun and endless adventure opportunities make Thailand one of the most hospitable countries on earth. Once you get to Thailand you often end up staying longer than you first intended. The problem that a lot of tourists come across is that they have not thought far enough ahead to get a 60-day tourist visa for Thailand at the Thai embassy before they left home for Thailand. Instead, they simply get the 30-day stamp at immigration when they land in Bangkok. When they realize they want to stay longer, they are in a mess.

Jammie and I freely admit that we belong to this latter group that did not seek a tourist visa for Thailand before leaving home. We had assumed that we would be given a 90-day stamp at the airport.  No such luck.  All you get in Thailand is 30 days.  So we had to leave Thailand on a “visa run” to the Thailand embassy in Laos. Luckily, it worked very smoothly. Here’s what you do:

1). Pick a visa run service. Don’t do a visa run on your own. It is technically possible but it takes longer and it is very messy. If you have an experienced agency working on your behalf you benefit from their experience and connections at the border. You are less likely to be ripped off and there will be less waiting around. We picked Meesuk Travel based on great reviews from friends and we highly recommend their services.

2). Pay up. All told we paid 6,500 baht each (about $220). This was an all-inclusive fee. All the steps that follow (with the exception of a few dollars spent on incidentals) were covered by this upfront fee.

3). Speed through the night. We met the group at a KFC at 7:00 in the evening. Fees were paid and papers processed by 9:00 PM and then we were off to get our tourist visa for Thailand. The trip up to the Laotian border was fast (about 9 hours), even with bathroom breaks every two hours.

At the border...

4.) Arrive at the Thai/Laotian border before dawn. We were at the border to Laos before dawn. There was an hour-long wait at the border before our papers were processed to enter communist Laos.

5). Let agents work immigration. As mentioned, trying to get your own tourist visa for Thailand on a border-hopping visa run, is a bad idea. Let the agents work their magic. I talked to enough people that assured me that the hookups that the agents bring to the table are worth their weight in gold.

lookin' crazy at the Thai embassy... I was barely awake...

6.) Breeze through the Thai embassy in 15 minutes. We were in and out of the Thai embassy in Laos in under 15 minutes. You have to be physically present to submit your application for a tourist visa to Thailand but as soon as you have done so, you can leave the rest to the embassy and your trusty agents.

7.) Crash at the hotel. We got to our hotel by about 10 AM and were exhausted. So after a buffet breakfast we collapsed in our hotel room until dinner.

Jammie loving the Patuxai victory monument in the heart of Vientiane

9.) Live large in Vientiane. But after dinner we were able to explore Vientiane, the capital of Laos. I’ll talk more about some of the attractions in Laos in an upcoming post but for now I’ll say that it was one of the most charming towns I’ve visited in Asia PLUS it offered great views of the Mekong River.

10). Agents pick up passports. The next day, agents pick up your passport and then it is time to cross the border back into Thailand. This was another hour-long wait but considering we now had our tourist visa for Thailand, we happily ambled around the duty free store, content that the hard part was done.

tired but happy back at the Thai border

11). Go home. It was great to re-enter Thailand! We slept much of the trip home but when we stumbled into our Bangkok apartment at about midnight we were very happy campers. Mission accomplished!

Anyone want to add their tips for getting a tourist visa for Thailand? Have any questions? Tell me in the comment section!

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Bjorn Karlman

Bangkok, Thailand

Last Saturday night.... Let's get loud!!

It is loud. It is passionate. It is unbeatable. Last Saturday night, Jammie and I headed to a Filipino karaoke party with some Filipino friends that teach English here in Bangkok. We loved it. For those wanting to understand Filipino culture, date a Filipina girl, get Filipino jokes or just have a great evening, hitting a Filipinio karaoke party is essential. Here are the basics:

Pretty much any Filipino party is a karaoke party

Whether or not the Filipino party you are about to visit is billed as a karaoke party, chances are that karaoke will be involved. Sure, there will be Filipino party games and all kinds of foods from the Philippines but if nobody busts out the magic mic (top notch, high tech karaoke gear), something is very wrong.

Expect the karaoke songs to start about half-way through the evening. If you arrive, at 7:00 PM, say, the karaoke will likely be starting around 9:00 and will be in full swing by 10:00. It probably won’t fizzle until past midnight once all the karaoke songs that everyone has suggested have at least been attempted.

Give it your all

There is no holding back in Filipino karaoke. As with anything at a Filipino party, you had better lose your inhibitions and give it your all. Don’t know any Tagalog karaoke songs? Well, they will have English ones. So if you want to impress that Filipina girl you’ve had your eye on, you had better rock that magic mic. Understand, you do not need to be good in the traditional sense. You just have to be passionate.

No standing on the sidelines

And don’t think that you only have to get passionate if you yourself are taking part in the karaoke singing (as in holding one of the mics). If you try to avoid the action at a Filipino party, chances are that you will be outed with brutal efficiency and recruited into bellowing out “We are the Champions” à la the clip above.

They start you young

See the little boy being held up to the magic mic?  That’s called grooming.  Training in karaoke starts when you are young.  Filipino parties are always teeming with kids.  That’s part of the experience.  Filipino party games are often designed specifically for kids so they are an expected part of the experience.  And because they start so young, Filipinos are absolute naturals at karaoke.

Even old white guys can join

This is often my favorite part.  Even old white guys are handed the magic mic at Filipino parties.  The guy in the vid above (married to a Filipina woman) did super well.  The magic mic software has a grading system and he scored 99 out of a 100.  We were all very impressed.  He was singing “Hey Jude”:)

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Bjorn Karlman

Bangkok, Thailand

Sick as a dog... like the blanket?:)

Some of you saw this coming: Swiftly on the heels of our most dramatic culinary adventure last week – eating raw durian (a fruit) and sticky rice – I was hit like a sledgehammer with the most violent food poisoning I’ve had since college. I mean it was brutal, out-of-both-ends stuff requiring Tarzan-like leaps out of bed to the facilities.

Oh, the irony

Even in my miserable state the irony of it all was too funny. In my last post I had confidently declared Thai street food fair game and now here I was, the ever-present occupant of my bathroom.

One thing was for sure: there was plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to analyze what had happened. Was I wrong to have taken the risk of eating Bangkok street food? Should I swear it all off?

A lesson

As much as my stomach was telling me never to eat Thai street food again, my brain knew better. This was a lesson in restraint and commonsense (the gooey fruit had been festering in a lukewarm milky substance for hours without refrigeration and I really should have known better than to think I could handle it). It was not grounds for a drastic retreat to peanut butter sandwiches for the balance of my stay in Bangkok.

My default MO is one of at least slight overconfidence. Often it pays off – I attempt challenges, assuming things will work out and then they often do. But occasionally you just end up loosening your bowels.

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Bjorn Karlman

Bangkok, Thailand

OK, yes (as I admitted a couple posts ago) we are eating food from the Bangkok street stalls. And we haven’t gotten sick yet. The food is unbelievably delicious. But there are a few things to remember before you head to your first food stall:

Be brave!
Yes, it takes some courage to start eating food cooked by the side of the road in a foreign country. But this is one experience you need to have. I have simply never had such good, inexpensive food. You can get a great meal of Thai street food for $1.50. So be brave, walk up to the food stall serving the food you are most dying to eat, point at what you want and you will be well on your way to enjoying a genuine, Thai experience.

Eat cooked food
To ensure a decent level of hygiene, only eat food that has been cooked in front of you. The heat will kill the bugs. Steer clear of raw fruit or veggies (at least for the first few days while your stomach adjusts) as they may be washed in water that has not been purified. The locals can handle it but be careful here.

Living life dangerously! We are bad examples. We had raw fruit smoothies within our first week in Thailand... not generally a great idea but an expat friend talked us into it:)

Try new stuff
There is amazing range so don’t be afraid to branch out. We have been experimenting a lot with different dishes. The first night it was pastries, an omelet, spicy chicken, basil, rice and a fried egg. Since then it’s been a bit of a free for all. Curries, soups, stews and an embarrassing array of desserts. There is endless variety so there is no excuse not to indulge your inner foodie.

I'd like.... everything.

Skip Monday
A lot of Thai street food stalls close on Monday so you may want to stay indoors for your meals as the work week starts… Eat at the mall instead. In fact, a lot of the popular street stalls have their own branches in Bangkok malls (which stay open.). I’ll dedicate an upcoming post to the malls here but let me just say right now that they are so large they really should issue customers GPS devices.

The water issue
To avoid spending all night on the throne, stay away from tap water in Bangkok. It is not fit for drinking. However, restaurants that serve water generally serve purified water so you are typically OK having some.

To drink or to suffer curry burn... that is the dillemma.

Go with the crowd
There is safety in numbers when it comes to Thai street food. Hit up the busy stalls. They are busy for a reason and can be trusted more than the ones that get less traffic. This is one time it is absolutely appropriate to bow to peer pressure.

Have you had street food in Thailand? What did I miss? Feel free to add to the list in the comment section.

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Bjorn Karlman

Bangkok, Thailand

blast from the past... my friends from the good old days in the Philippines

The mist of confusion lifts when you make friends in a new city. Everything becomes easier.

Lucky

We headed to an English-speaking church in Bangkok this weekend hoping to meet as many people as possible.  Because we had taken the wrong route to the church we got there super late. So instead of actually going to church we started talking to those outside.

We asked all the questions that the language barrier had kept us from asking earlier in the week:

“Are there any good apartments around here?”
“What’s the best way to navigate Bangkok?”
“What are some cool charities that we could volunteer for?”

Luckily they had lots of answers and ideas. We started exchanging numbers with people and jotting down suggestions.

Blast from the past

And then it got even better. “Hi Bjorn!” I looked up and in front of me were some childhood friends that I had grown up with in Philippines.  One of them worked in Bangkok and this weekend the whole family was visiting from the Philippines.  I couldn’t believe it! The relief at seeing familiar faces was immense. We were automatically invited for lunch and then a potluck for dinner.

Want a job?

By the end of the day we had two work opportunities and some info on an NGO (non-governmental organization) for which we could volunteer. Both work opportunities required fluent English – one was for office work for an international company, the next for English language teaching in one of the leading Bangkok universities.  The breakthroughs were mind blowing.

just looking at this Saturday night potluck pic makes me hungry again....

Bottom Line: the 80/20 Principle

This experience really drove home what is commonly called the 80/20 principle.  Here’s how lifestyle design blogger and bestselling author, Tim Ferriss puts it:  “80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs,” or, “80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time.”  This has definitely been true of our time in Bangkok so far.  All our time spent reading and hunting for info did not produce anything near the results of a handful of conversations with the right people.

Nowhere was this more true than with our Bangkok apartment rental efforts:

We had spent hours online, pouring over Bangkok apartment listings. We had painstakingly narrowed down our search to the options that fit our budget. We spent a lot of time looking up locations on Bangkok Maps. In all the time we had spent so far we hadn’t even gotten to calling any of the landlords up (I was dreading doing so because I was anticipating a mountain of language barrier problems.).

One conversation on Saturday made all the difference. “I’ve got a great, cheap apartment that I think could work,” said the husband of one of my childhood friends. He then hooked us up with one of his friends that negotiated an amazing deal.

It was humbling to realize that this one conversation had produced far better results than our hours spent wading through online listings. The Bangkok apartment our friend found us cost $130/month (less than half of what we had budgeted). It was in a safe area and right next door to a friend.

Do-gooding

Our next major priority is finding some nonprofits to work for. We will be pooling the suggestions we get as well as visiting a few different organizations. We will be giving all recommendations submitted on this blog special preference so please submit your ideas in the comment section.

Please leave a comment with your suggestions. Know of a good Bangkok-based orphanage? An after school program? A program working to prevent underage human trafficking? We don’t need pay. Just an interesting project. Have a think. Maybe you can help us….

Looking forward to hearing from you…

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Bjorn Karlman

Bangkok, Thailand

Health paranoia be dammed, the first place we went to eat on our first night in Bangkok was a street stand. And then we hit a second stand. And then a third. The food was great!

We didn’t want to get too crazy on the first night so we had decided to try out options that we could walk to from our hotel. The first stand had these amazing coconut and pineapple pastries, the second had the best spiced omelet I’ve ever tasted and the third had a seating area so we sat down for a plate of spicy chicken with basil, rice and a fried egg.

Unbeatable…

“Until you’ve eaten on a Bangkok street, your noodles mingling with your sweat, and your senses dulled by chilli, exhaust and noise, you haven’t actually eaten Thai food,” said the Lonely Planet guide book that we had downloaded. I have always loved Thai food but the book was right, Thai food on the street was a totally different, multi-sensory experience.

The spice level of the food was predictable. But the flavors were so enticing you couldn’t put your fork down. Jammie put it well, “My mouth is burning but I just can’t stop eating!” It was so amazingly good.

“What other city has such a full-flavored, no-holds-barred, insatiable, fanatical approach to eating?” asks the guide book. I’ve just landed but I am guessing the answer is “none”.

Unbelievable prices

At the local prices, the dishes tasted even better. Yes, we had done our research and yes, we knew that the prices were extremely low by American standards but the feeling of eating a whole meal for 50 baht ($1.60) was amazing. We may end up doing a lot less cooking here than we expected…

Language barriers and scams

The language barrier at first, was worse than we had expected. We had basically no Thai to offer and they had little English. But then sweet relief came as they called someone over who spoke decent English. And that is the beauty of the Thai approach. They make it easy on their visitors.

Scam alert: If you are in Thailand and are quickly befriended by someone who speaks good English, don’t linger too long. A common scam involves someone that dramatically breaks the language barrier, speaks great English, claiming that their son or daughter is studying at a university in your country.

They disarm you with charm and a really convincing knowledge of your country. This kind of behavior is not normal among the average Thai so watch out for it as you may end up getting suckered into unwanted purchases or other awkward and financially burdensome situations.

Where to live?

Well, we’ve slept all night and neither one of us is sick so I guess we have lived to see another day. (I suppose taking pepto bismol before we ate didn’t hurt either…)

Now we are on to the apartment hunt. We have identified about 20 apartments that we are interested in – all costing $200-300. We are going to head out and visit a few today and we’ll be soliciting some advice from some expats over the weekend.

Have any suggestions for an apartment? Let us know in the comments.

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Bjorn Karlman

Let's hope this little gem never comes in handy...

Today is the big day. Our upcoming 11 hour and 5 minute flight to Bangkok has us feeling all jittery.

Here’s what we have planned for our first few days. (I’ll let you know if the real thing actually works out the way we thought it would.):

Arriving in Bangkok

Pic via Facebook user "BANGKOK" - click pic for url

The fact that I am in a different country typically hits just as I am walking out the doors of the airport. We plan on getting a taxi straight into the part of the city where our hotel is. As much as we’d love to be cheap and take the bus to the hotel (approx $5), a taxi costs $10 or less and is way quicker.

Hotels – Here’s a site (or app) worth using if you aren’t already: Booking.com. I first came across it in Oxford when I was hanging out with Jammie, my sister and some close friends in Blackwells, the largest bookstore in town. I compared what we found on Booking.com to some other hotel sites and the accommodation listings in some travel books and in the end the winning hotel had the following:

1)  A very solid average rating out of 2000 reviews.

2)  Gorgeous rooms with all the amenities

3)  Gym / hot tub / steam room

4)  Fitness center / Private theater / international restaurant

5)  LAST AND BEST:  We got four nights for a very reasonable $57, so $14.25 per day.

Will the actual experience live up to how the hotel was advertized online?  Look for my review in a soon-coming post:)

Apartments – This was a tough one.  We only want to spend $300 or less on our longer term housing in Bangkok. You can pretty much get anything you want in Bangkok – from shack to palatial – it is all there. We have been researching apartments options with a blend of excellent price and location (we want something fairly centrally located) and excellent natural light.  There are a lot of apartment rental sites for Bangkok and many are in English as there is such a huge expat population.  We haven’t decided on anything yet.  We will visit a handful of apartments in person in the first few days following our arrival.  Then we will make the decision in person.

Food

Jammie and I with my sister and her husband chilling at a Thai restaurant in Bath, England earlier this week

It was all I could do not to put this at the top of the post. We are so excited about this part since we both love Thai food.  I’ve been doing some research on where the best spots to get Thai food are.  What I’ve been finding so far is that the best eateries are often not the upscale joints catering to wealthy tourists.  Often the hole-in-the-walls are best.  We will shamelessly be soliciting suggestions as soon as we land.

If you have any good ideas for where to go in Bangkok for the best of the local cuisine, let me know in the comments.  There’s nothing like a personal recommendation!

Making Friends  – Currently we have a handful of friends living in Thailand, none of which are Thai.  Our plan is to hit local churches, Rotary (business networking) clubs, Toastmasters (public speaking) clubs, Chambers of Commerce and the Swedish, Filipino and American embassies as we kick off our round of networking.

Do you know of anyone that could be helpful in terms of finding worthy nonprofits for which we could volunteer?  We are looking for ideas.  We would be good for tutoring, writing, fundraising and English-based PR work.  Let us know if you think of anything.  In an upcoming post I will share some info about a Thai-based anti sex-trafficking nonprofit that we will be volunteering for in our quest for savvy, global do-gooding.

OK, gotta wrap this up as my sister and her husband are coming to pick us up for our airport ride in under an hour.  If you have any other tips for navigating the first few days in Bangkok, let us know in the comments.

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Bjorn Karlman