So many travel blogs (which this is not, actually, I’m just a blogger who happens to be traveling at the moment) are very glamorous. If I were one of those blogs I could tell you about how yesterday we finally made it to the Palace despite running into the very same lady who told us it was closed on Saturday (I suspect she was one of the “wily strangers” the signs at the Palace warned us to beware of), or about how sometimes when you travel you have great moments where you’re sitting in the middle of Khao San Road (referred to by Lonely Planet as the “backpacker ghetto”) at nighttime having a beer (brought to you open, so you sit there and stress out about whether you’re about to be drugged and have your kidney stolen but everyone else has an open one too and you’re only like two blocks from your hotel so it will probably be fine?) with your boyfriend who somehow looks unfairly attractive after three days of barely showering and practically drowning in a pool of your own sweat despite the fact those same three days have made you look like a hobgoblin and everything is pretty cool.
Those blogs do not tell you about what happens when you’re a female traveler whose menstrual cycle is a vicious lurking demon waiting to strike at the most inopportune moments. That after a fairly peaceful night, during which you even went to bed at 11 p.m. like a normal human, you wake up at 7 a.m. the next morning covered in blood and have to wash your only pair of pajamas with the handheld shower head and the weird wall-dispenser shampoo that is probably the same as the soap dispenser with different dye in it. And you’re trying to catch an overnight train in about four hours, so you probably wish you had sprung for some of that fancy expensive quick-dry fabric even though pajamas would have been the last thing you splurged on but maybe if you hang them by the window and under the AC they’ll be okay. Why doesn’t anyone warn you about that sort of problem. Surely I am not the only woman who needs to factor in emergency cold-water clothing washing every four weeks or so.
So no. This is not a glamorous travel blog. It is that kind of blog. Consider yourself fully warned.
Ever On and On 
Ah, yes, the less glamorous side of traveling that somehow never makes it to the NY Times travel section. 🙂 Maybe the solution is to bring two pajamas, so you can throw the, er, red one if you don’t have time to do the washing. Happy travels, nonetheless! 🙂
It is definitely an experience! Three(ish?) days later and they still aren’t dry either because we’ve been moving around, sigh. I’ve stolen the boyfriend’s extra cotton pants in the meantime.
did you love the sign at the ticket gate that says “free for Thais”….. I think they do work to keep falang out of the palace…
They really do. Though I think the people on the street who told us the palace was closed were more interested in getting us on their boat tour than in keeping us away from the palace.
That is amusing in a terrible way.
THEY’RE STILL DAMP TOO.