Bangkok / Krung Thep (กรุงเทพ)

A new city can be quite overwhelming on the first day. It is hard to find your bearings. The best thing is to avoid taxi's and explore on foot. However, in Bangkok the crossings are not very pedestrian friendly. My hotel was not far from the river Chao Phraya and I soon ended up taking the Chao Phraya Express Boat and mingled with the commuters going to work. The color of the flag indicates the line. Looking at the city from the water gave me a sense of scale.

Chinatown

Bangkok's Chinatown is one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. Since I live near Amsterdam's Chinatown - if you can call Zeedijk 'Chinatown' - I just had to visit. The Bowring Treaty signed on 18 April 1855 between the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Siam liberalised foreign trade in Siam. As a result businesses flourished in Chinatown, which was founded in 1782.

By the turn of the 19th–20th centuries Chinatown had a red-light district hosting opium dens, theatres, nightclubs and gambling houses. In 2017 Bangkok's Chinatown is certainly less interesting, but I still spent half a day in this district roaming the narrow alleyways, eating a soup with very fresh pig intestines and visiting Chinese temples, like Wat Mangkon Kamalawat, the largest Chinese Buddhist temple in Bangkok. It was a delightful place to hang out.

Wat Mangkon Kamalawat

Now everyone can fly

Moving on from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Domestic air travel is astonishingly cheap in Thailand. I paid the equivalent of € 86,02 for my flight from Bangkok Don Mueang International Airport to Chiang Mai International Airport with Nok Air. Thai Airways owns the second-largest stake in Nok Air.

Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azur - Saint-Martin-Vésubie

A travel story from early springtime in 2010. This was a time you had to mask the bad quality of the iPhone camera by applying heavy filters to the image. It renders the images both a little tacky and evocative.

In 2010 I had been running for a couple of years. On this trip I decided to ditch the heavy mountain shoes for some light trail running shoes. I had planned to go hiking, instead I found myself running most of the time. I guess in the springtime of 2010 I discovered trail running. In the summer of 2010 I ran my first 50k trail run in The Netherlands.

In that year I must have also read Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall for the first time. This book catapulted running from the sports category to something which was actually cool.

Flight: Amsterdam Schiphol - Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azur.
Bus: Nice - Saint-Martin-Vésubie.

Boarding on the tarmac at Schiphol Airport. Flight time is about 2 hours. In 2021 it took me 2 days to reach Nice by car. By train the journey can be done in 11 hours.

Camping A La Ferme Au Verge Saint Joseph. The camping is basically a fruit orchard.

So early in the season I had the fruit orchard almost to myself.

View from my tent: moon at night.

View of Saint-Martin-Vésubie before storm Alex in 2020.

Ditching the boots to start running.

Lunch break in the mountains consist of mainly canned food, cheese and dried sausages.

When the snow melts, crocus flowers appear.

Wild trout from Lac du Boréon.

What did I bring to read? The Mind of Wall Street: A Legendary Financier on the Perils of Greed and the Mysteries of the Market by Leon Levy apparently.

Busstation Saint-Martin-Vésubie. In 2010 I didn’t own a car. My wheeled travel bag had to fit my tent and was so big KLM considered it oversized cargo. I had to check in my bag at a special counter. Quite a hassle.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep in Nice. I had an evening flight so I just spent the day in the city. The whole trip lasted four days.

View from Colline du Château in Nice.