Som ett led i att presentera de som bokat resan och kommer att vara med på PBC så kommer vi låta er presentera er själva här på bloggen. Först ut är Manuel och Adam som delvis kommer att vara med på PBC:
Hej allihopa!
My name is Manuel, I am a good friend of Christoffers and I will be in Thailand as well by beginning of next year, together with my buddy Adam.
Adam is English but a nice bloke anyways. I am German and we both live in Berlin right now.
I started talking about escaping the winter with Christoffer the last time I was in Stockholm (I lived there between 2006 and 2008 and come back once or twice a year) and from then on our plans have pretty much been running alongside.
Adam and I booked our flights to Bangkok about 2 months ago, we will be there between end of January and end of March. From talking to friends who have been in and out of Thailand for about 10 years we gathered that the area around Hua Hin would be most convenient: not as crazy busy and full of tourists as Bangkok, but not too far away from Bangkok either, affordable, nice beaches and a bit of nightlife.
Adam and I are both freelancers and “Internet people”, he works more in online marketing, I do software development. Shameless self promotion: right now we are working on The Hipstery and on opening a brick-and-mortar Hipstery Shop here in Berlin.
So the goal for us is not to go “on holidays” for two months, but to find a nice place to stay and live and work there, see the area etc.
The minimum requirements are a room for ourselves (no dorm) and a separate bathroom, but if we end up in a hostel, hotel, bungalow, apartment or else we don’t know yet. We also quickly dismissed the idea of finding accommodation from over here for several reasons:
a) you have no way of knowing in which conditions or part of town you end up (without doing a lot of research maybe)
b) pictures are deceiving
c) time-intensive
d) even if you find something nice looking, you will probably pay a much higher price when booking it in advance from Europe, compared to just showing up with cash and offering to rent it right away.
I have never been in that part of Asia, but Adam has and he and everybody else are saying that it is so easy to get around in Thailand that it doesn’t really make sense so try to find accommodation in advance. We consider ourselves pretty flexible, so if we don’t find anything right away we will probably just stay in a hostel and keep looking, of if we only find something for part of the time, then we will move around more. So the only thing we will book is a hostel for 4 or 5 nights in Bangkok for the first days. The we’ll see how quickly we become bore or overwhelmed there and move on down to Hua Hin.
It would be great if we all find something together, the more the merrier and we would also be in a better haggling position! But we will see how it works out.
I for one am looking forward to meeting all of you!
Auf Wiedersehen in Thailand,
Manuel