Bangkok

At the moment I am sitting on what feels like the 100th floor of the Paragon Mall in Bangkok. This place is a trip. I am sitting outside of the I-max theater in front of the Multi-millionaire Siam Auto show. Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces, Benzes, Maseratis, Porsches and the list goes on. It is a mystery to me how they got them to the top floor, but what trips me out more than their presence is the permanency of the dealerships here. Tomorrow the show will be over and the Ferraris and the Rolls Royce booth will be removed, but even then the Lamborghini dealer will remain and it will be accompanied by more than a few names that cater exclusively to members of the highest tax bracket: Porsche, Maserati, Bentley, BMW, Audi, Lotus. In this mall you can buy a bad food court lunch, an Abercrombie t-shirt, a Starbucks coffee and if you are feeling plush you can top it off with an Audi R8. You know, just in case you don't feel cool driving home in the car you showed up in. Malls serve the elite here, and with that the elite names make it their business to be well located in the mall. As you venture through the Paragon Tower the higher you climb, the higher the price tags. Scattered about the first 5 or 6 floors are store fronts for Armani, Versacci, Balenciaga, Hermes and countless other couture brands that I no nothing about save for the fact that I can't afford the clothes they make. But If you want to make the kind of purchase that will elevate your status in the world then you have some literal climbing to do. The escalator journey to the Lambos is maddening.
Brittany put into words what I could not, so I will steal hers here:"Malls in America are considered a middle-class convenience; here they are a bustling grounds for the Thai elite to showcase their wealth... A Denver mall having Bentley's on display sounds absurd. The American elite prefer to seclude themselves; spend their money in Boutiques and high end pockets of the city as far removed from "everyone else" as possible, while here those who have wealth are spending money in public places for the world to see." Rodeo drive doesn't have anything on this place! Sitting in front of the cineplex I am glad movies are still cheap because I have come to realize I also can't buy anything in this place, so shopping won't be how i pass my time, and I need to do something in here to stay out of the heat.

Traveling is endlessly entertaining, always interesting, and at times deeply moving, but on a $25 dollar a day budget, it is never glamorous. My budget is technically $35 but between visas, major transportation costs that eat up three days budget at a time and the occasional other fixed cost I have roughly $25 a day to buy 3 square, put a roof over my head each night, and buy the occasional indulgence. Don't get me wrong, money goes a long way here, so with my budget I am not always roughing it, but in Bangkok life is expensive. The hard sell is on and the people are proud to lay it on thick. In under a minuet you could find yourself talked out of your own shirt, and the system is designed to empower the salesmen.

Example: I said budget travel is unglamorous; never has that been more true than with our arrival in Bangkok. the 10 hour bus ride was supposed to be our bed for the night. It was leaving Chaing Mai at 6:15 and the lady selling tickets had reconfirmed what the sign above her head had already told us. "10 hours." cool i thought. No bus has gotten us in on time yet, so we will sleep on the bus wake up at 5:30 in Bangkok grab an early breakfast then check into a hotel, and just like that my optimism got the better of me.
The good news is we spent way less time on the bus than expected. Unfortunately for us though, the suspiciously good trip time led to an arrival into the Northern bus terminal at 2:45 in the morning and at that time of night on the tail end of a 10 hour bus ride, haggling is the last thing I want to do. If you think that your negotiation skills are up to snuff in that scenario then you are either a better traveler than me, or you're lying to yourself. Brittany and I wandered the night for 2 hours trying to roll with the punches; trying to find a cheap logical solution. In the end none came. We spent an entire day's budget on a dingy room that smelled of stagnant water, and we did it knowing full well that we would be asked to check out in just under 7 hours. I love Thailand, but so far Bangkok is not my favorite.