Brett and Bernii

Ugh. Writing a travel blog is hard…

Now that we have left our jobs and our apartment behind to travel the world, we realized that we are effectively unemployed and homeless. But in a good way.

Our first week of traveling is almost over. We flew from Brisbane to Sydney last Saturday and spent the night at the Occidental Hotel in Sydney CBD. The hotel was in a great location and was everything we needed. The $7 pints for happy hour helped us to cope with the noise from the Saturday night revellers.

On Sunday morning we woke early and had a cold shower (there was no hot water) before heading to the airport. Our flight to Bangkok departed on time and landed about 40 minutes earlier than scheduled. We opted for a taxi from the airport to the hotel as it wasn’t yet peak hour and our bags were fairly heavy and cumbersome. It was much faster than we remembered and cost us 550thb (about AU$26). It was probably more than it should have cost, but we had a lot of bags and were just happy to get to the hotel.

We checked into the Ibis Hotel Sukhumvit Soi 4 for three nights and spent the night reacquainting ourselves with the nearby Bangcockney Pub.

On the second day, we rented our storage locker at i-Store Self Storage on Soi 1 at Nana. The locker is 0.72sqm and cost us the equivalent of AU$478 for 12 months. I expect that we will renew for a further 12 months which will allow us to travel light for the entire 2 years.

We purchased local pre-paid SIM cards for AU$105 each which include 12 months of data (50GB per month). They are on the AIS network, which is supposed to have the best coverage in Thailand.

We then purchased Rabbit Cards which are the reloadable pre-paid travel cards for the BTS Skytrain. They cost 200thb which includes 100thb of travel credit. We are still learning the BTS map and have nearly jumped on the wrong train multiple times. Usually after beers.

On Wednesday we checked-in to the Ambassador Hotel on Soi 11. Unfortunately, they have had no hot water since Thursday morning. After experiencing the same problem at the Occidental Hotel in Sydney, we hope this isn’t becoming a theme for this trip.

Over the past few days we have explored a few local areas, walked around Benjakitti Park, eaten lunch at Mark Wiens’ restaurant Phed Mark, and got a back neck and shoulders massage at Spring Massage.

On Monday we will catch a bus to Hua Hin for 4 days at the beach, before returning to Bangkok for New Years, and then heading to Pattaya to see the other side of the bay, before maybe heading south to the islands.

Stay tuned for next week’s update… if this post is anything to go by, I should have it up before 2025 🤞