Being late for Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

I had another weekender up in Bangkok in November last year and this time, with friends. No definite plans prior except that we intend to stay with married friends, based in Bangkok. All we needed was to book our plane tickets and bring ourselves.

We had an evening flight on a Friday from Singapore and arrived in Bangkok quite late. Yes, we got to make use of the one hour difference between the two cities, with Bangkok's earlier timezone. But having arrived in our friend's apartment, we succumbed to late night conversations till the wee hours of the morning. Of course, with friends you rarely see, how could it not be a given? :D

Come Saturday. We dragged ourselves out from bed and the only push we had was that we were only there for the weekend!

Our motorboat at the start of our journey

Hosteling in Barcelona, Rome, and Cologne

A residential area in Barcelona

I just realized that I don't have pictures of our rooms in Barcelona, Rome, and Cologne but to make up for it, I am including some random pictures that I took there (like the one above although it's totally unrelated haha). As I have mentioned in my previous post about our Airbnb room in Paris, there are countries where we had availed cheaper accommodation. These were Barcelona in Spain and Rome in Italy. And the wonderful weather in these two cities, was an additional bonus we warmly enjoyed! Sunny days and blue skies in autumn? Yes please!

Meanwhile, our stay in Cologne was also relatively cheap but it wasn't that much of a nice experience. More on this later.

It is not my first time to stay in a hostel, where this type almost always equates to dorm-type rooms. I had my first time in Seoul, South Korea and my experience was good that I readily welcome the idea of doing it again. Most likely for me, because I don't prefer staying at big hotel chains with amenities I might not avail. Besides, I really don't have the money to burn to begin with! hehe #thirdworldproblems But I am not all too sure if that's really a bad thing since cozy and more homey stay is of my preference. Whatever floats our boats, my dear friends. ;)

Our Accommodation in Europe: AirBnb in Paris, France

Location of our first pad, the Parisian way

The cost of accommodation in Europe can be a huge chunk of your travel budget unless you can crash into a relative's or a friend's pad. But such was not our case. There is another alternative which is couchsurfing but we chose not to.  So we were left with finding our own roof, carefully sifting through hundreds for that good and affordable one.

We went to a total of 6 countries in Western Europe and it was good that some of these countries offered cheaper stay over the others. Somehow, it got balanced out in the end that while we spent several nights in dorm-type rooms, we were able to book a nice hotel room during the other nights.

Factors that we considered were price (of course), location and safety (because we were only 2 girls!). We only had a span of 2 weeks for this trip so, it came as obvious that we needed to stay in a convenient location. We came from a distant land that it was imperative to wisely manage our precious time there!