As I found out the flight ticket from Jakarta, Indonesia to Hanoi, Vietnam was too expensive for me thus I decided to take a flight from Jakarta to KL then train to Thailand, bad timing as this was a major holiday and if anyone needed to travel by train from KL to north was going to have to wait 4 or 5 days for the next available booking. So now bus was the next option, bus transportation is cheap but many hours, I left KL to Hat Yai, Thailand which was an 11 hour journey, then from Hat Yai by bus, well actually shared van to Bangkok, another 12 hours, basically a straight 24 hours on the bus, the ass did not like it, when I write ‘ass’ I am not speaking metaphorically meaning me, but actually meaning the derriere, a sore tush from all of that uncomfortable sitting.

As I usually do I go to Booking.com to find and reserve affordable accommodations for my stay, I found such called ‘All In One Hostel’ a dormitory with eggs, toast and coffee included for breakfast costing 225 THB ($8.40 CAD) and without knowing just happened to be very near the famous ‘Kho San Road’ which is a place I needed to go to find a expert travel agent in the area to help me with a flight eventually to Quito, Ecuador from SE Asia, anyways as it turns out, no such luck in finding this contact, but I will recommend this hostel, with one exception. I stayed at All In One Hostel for a week and on the last day of my stay I need paperwork printed out for me regarding Visa to enter into Vietnam, well I was told 10 bht per page, I just felt for a week stay they could ignore that cost of printing off a couple of pages for that price. I kinda felt like I was being ’nickled & dimed’ that’s all.

Kho San Road is a very popular and busy road for eating at the many restaurants, staying at the many hostels, eating from the many street food ‘hawker carts’ serving up juice drinks, fresh fruits, fried foods and meals, coconut ice cream, to bugs and insects to eat. But as I have been walking around there are a few other streets all in the same location being the same, for some reason Kho San Road appears to be the top attraction. Whether its Kho San Road the street next to it or across there are many sellers selling souvenir’s, t-shirts, jewelry, massages, suits, food, taxi and/or tuk tuk rides, they are out there wanting your money and the tourists are buying. As I did with buying so called ‘Calvin Klein’ underwear for 100 baht ($3.75 CAD) and as I washed them out under the shower head for at least 5 minutes wondering when the black dye will stop flowing for this new garment, I dried them out and wore them overnight to find out I had just stained the part of my body black underneath these new under wear that I wore, enough said.

I travelled to this infamous ‘cowboy street’ to check it out, by tuk tuk the cost was 80 baht, return 150, with much arguing about this. Now this ‘cowboy road’ was a short road compared to Kho San Road and not as exciting as expected, it seems the action on this street starts after 7pm with the ladies in front of the bars wearing their skimpy bikini swim suits, lots of neon lighting for those wanting to photograph. But other than that, this is it, the bars with dancing girls, restaurants with girls, hotel rooms and a bright neon street.

There are tuk tuk drivers advertising only for 20 thb a ride to three or four places, like the big buddha, floating market and…., but you need to stop into a tailor shop first so that the driver is reimbursed his fuel expenses by the tailor shop for a 10 minute visit so that they can convince you of a sale for a custom made suit, shirt, pants whatever they can make and sell you, then off to the attractions mentioned, but not all free, as I got to the so called ‘floating market’ I would have had to pay 1500 thb for the boat ride to the ‘floating market’. As I would like to see such attractions here like the ‘floating market’ and ‘train market’ it always comes down to the sometimes high cost of such fees for said attractions. For a back pack traveller this has cost me more money than I can afford as I know I have not been able to stay within the budget I thought I would, so unfortunately for me no more expensive tourist attractions such as the ‘train market’ and ‘floating market’, as a package deal would cost 1600 baht ($60.) too much for this backpack traveller wanting to stay on a budget.

Lastly, for now anyways….always negotiate or bargain with the sellers when buying t-shirts or souvenir’s as they expect this, when announcing a ridiculous high price and you respond no to them, they’re immediate response is “what do you want to pay or can afford to pay?” So always negotiate, bargain or haggle with them, this is part of their culture, do not offend them by not doing so, if they tell you 600 baht, sometimes you may be able to get it for 1/2 of that or less, especially at PaTong Beach in Phuket, Thailand, not much difference here in Bangkok either, so bargain, as when I was on the beach in Lombok, Indonesia and a seller was wanting to sell a hand made bracelet to me, she wanted 50,000 rp ($5.00), I said no and the bargaining or haggling began, I got it for 15,000 rp ($1.50), I was happy and I trust she was happy, as it is not a lot of money either way, but it all adds up and one needs to know the value of each countries currency and if you had to work for this currency you would know the value of such currency immediately, as you may be working for one Canadian dollar per hour.