Bangkok

Bangkok, originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.

The travel gods must have been displeased with us. Our plans were all awry and we ended up in Bankok very late and The Wild Orchid, a well reviewed hotel I'd booked from the airport, was hideous. There was a huge patch of black mold on the ceiling tile, pounding dance music and I'm pretty sure it was a whorehouse. I had to decline the booking, but it had taken me about 45 minutes of frantic effort to find it and I was close to panic.
Our airport taxi driver had just dumped us off on the sweaty hot party streets of the Khao San Road area. There were mobs of people and he insisted he couldn't possibly drive down any of the side streets.
Imagine us hauling all of our luggage down this incredibly crowded street, very late, Krista carrying a drooping Eden, hoping that The Wild Orchid was just ahead. It wasn't. We got to "The Orchid" (even worse than the wild one) and said 'no, this CAN'T be it'. We're in dingy flophouse land. I parked the family at a little resturaunt and went in the other direction.
When I finally got back from The Wild Orchid with my bad news, the staff at this modest little resturaunt were so concerned for us that one of the waitresses led me about to try to find a place.
Everyplace was full. And some of the places made The Wild Orchid whorehouse look pretty good. Finally I found the Thai Cozy House which boasts a slick polished lobby, all marble tile, with an elevator and all. The room (on the 5th floor looked great, at least to my tired frantic eyes).
It took some shlepping to drag our bags and Eden over, and then it turned out that they only had one room on floor 5. If we wanted rooms together they had some on the second floor. Fine, whatever. Just give us the keys.
But we got to our second floor rooms and they were icky. No windows! Just a funky air conditioner so they were suffocatingly stuffy, no top sheet (which, to be fair, is common) and heavy on the mosquitoes. The bathroom was done in early eeeewwwww. India flatly refused to bathe. If I hadn't been so exhausted......But we were. It was awful. I fully expected to get bed bugs and/or malaria. It was the very low point of our trip to Thailand. Ugh.
The next morning, instead of sight seeing, I hit the streets, trying to find a decent place for our last night in Thailand.

After that very rough landing we found a very sweet little corner of Bangkok, Rambuttri Street near Khao San Road, much quieter but still quite lively. I lucked out and got two rooms at the new Rambuttri Village Inn. There were windows that opened. It was clean. And there was a pool on the roof!
From our window we could see street below and as it got dark it turned into a mellow party scene. In fact, it reminded us very much of Saturday night at the Oregon Country Fair. Pretty lights, lots of mellow cafes, street vendors--many of whom are selling actual crafts they've made. I bought pad thai from a woman with a little cart who woks it up right there to order.
Even though we were tired still, the excitement sort of pulled us down the stairs and onto the street. It was really fun!
If you are heading to this area you might try the Lamphu House, which was brand new in 2005 and seemed to have much better rates.