A Room With A View

Yay! Our internet is working at our apartment after 2 weeks of upgrades. Schedules mean nothing here. I don't plan to use it much. However, it does come in handy.

1. Looking up a specific word or topic while I am doing my daily Bible study. Right now I am going through Exodus and it will be nice to see what all these measurements and colors mean for the temple and how they come out.

2. Look up where I am going. I have drawn a few maps to show the taxi drivers to clarify my destination.

I really like this Grab Taxi. I have gotten a taxi every time, so far. Sometimes I have to wait 15 minutes. But, I can wait in comfort as I watch their little taxi move around on Google maps. I am going to cut my grocery delivery back to every other week and pick a day, like Tuesday, when I have nothing I will miss if they are super late again.

I did a pictorial on my apartment. I plan to do one on my apartment complex to show some of the differences. These are pictures of my neighborhood.

My apartment is south of downtown Bangkok. It is best to think of Bangkok like Orange County or Johnson County. There is no real downtown. Downtown has older, smaller buildings, It has lots of temples and is the nexus for the bus system, as well as the 3 sky train lines and the 1 underground metro line.

This picture is facing south. Notice the sky scrapers. They are all over. They are not clustered downtown like Los Angeles or Kansas City.

The medium buildings are part of a giant factory. I lucked out here. Because of the factory and their workers, there are a zillion street vendors near my apartment for:

1. breakfast (workers buy their lunch and take it inside to eat inside.)

2. Lunch (other workers come out for lunch.)

3. Supper (workers buy supper and other groceries to take home.)

Right across the street are 2 houses, kind of rare in my area. These people are probably upper middle class with government jobs or jobs with foreign companies that pay more.

My apartment building faces south and this is the street in front. No wasted space in Bangkok. There is barely room for 2 cars to pass. When walking down the street, I always have an eye out so I can hop off the street as they go by.

By the way, south faces the ocean (Gulf of Thailand) about 10 km away (Bangkok is huge - 8 million people.)

Turn 90 degrees to the right, we face west. More skyscrapers can be seen, as well as cranes building even more. Up, up, up we go!

Looking down a little bit we see the two houses next door. The first one is actually also used as a child care place that the workers use. Past those 2 is a little street and then a row of apartments. These are apartments for the locals. They have no air conditioning, no internet, no laundry facilities, and no elevator. They are usually 3 - 4 stories tall. They are probably about $50 - $75 per month for a 1 bedroom.

To the west is the major river in the area.

Turning another 90 degrees to the right toward the north, we see a bunch more skyscrapers and cranes. Downtown is another 5 - 8 miles north.

Looking down a little we see zillions of apartment buildings for the middle class. Houses, in Bangkok, are for the well off. They are sort of like the Anaheim Hills of Bangkok.

Many buildings have water tanks so there will be some pressure for the users.

It is hard to take a picture of the east direction, toward the airport. Leaning out my patio (back of apartment complex), you basically see a bunch more middle class apartments.

Taking a picture from a front balcony we see the continuation of my street. I have yet to explore this area.

Namaste From (halfway to) Nepal