Casa Nithra, Bangkok

Apologies for the short hiatus from the blogosphere. I was having difficulties uploading all the photos I wanted for this next post so I gave up for a few days, and then for quite a few days after that I had a really hard time getting myself back into the blogging swing if things.

Anyway, when I arrived back in Bangkok from Chiangmai, it was about 12:30 am on New Year’s Day. Everyone was in the street and happy and partying. I just needed to find a place to sleep. So. I set out searching for a hotel or guesthouse that had a vacancy. Unsurprisingly, most places were booked solid, but I just kept plugging at ‘er, moving my way through the streets, stopping at every hotel and guesthouse to ask about vacancies, and being turned away at every one. I was fully prepared that I might end up sleeping in a park or pretending that I was also an all-night New Years reveler, and since that was my alternative, there really was no harm in going on such a long walk to find a room. I started at the end of Pra Arthit Road opposite the Riva Surya, and the first place I could find that had a room available was quite a way away on Samsen Road. It was the Casa Nithra, which I almost wrote off completely and bypassed because I figured that there was no way they would have any rooms available and, even if they did, they were unlikely to give a room to someone as dressed down as I was with no luggage. But I was wrong on both counts. They gave me the last room they had available that night. It was 3,000 baht including breakfast or just 2,700 baht without breakfast.

I had been pretty curious about this hotel for a long time, as I used to walk by it on my way to work during my poor days when I was just scraping by in Bangkok. From the outside, it’s a pretty amazing, stylish-looking building. From the inside, well, it’s okay. It was nice but it was also just a normal hotel room.

The next morning, I went down to breakfast and discovered that they included BACON as part of their buffet. Let me let you in on a well-known secret about bacon: it is God’s gift to humankind. True story. Let me let you in on another secret about being an expatriate in a strict Muslim country where bacon is strictly prohibited: you do not actually realise how deep your love of bacon runs until you are deprived of it. When you are finally reunited with bacon, well, the following photos can show what happens.