We were ready to head north and we wanted a place centrally located where we could leave a bag behind and easily retrieve it on our way south again in February. We thought the Sukhumvit area would be more centrally located to transportation as it was on the Skytrain route, but as it turned out it was no more convenient than Kho San Road for the train station. We stayed at the historic Atlanta hotel, down a seemingly quiet street in an area lined with bigger hotels like the Marriot. Of course, this was the also the red-light district. There were plenty of available girls on Kho San Road but here the “availability” was a little more blatant and the girls were dressed a little more “provocative” shall we say. It was very interesting to see how accepted this profession was in a culture where it was thought of as disrespectful to have bare shoulders or shorts or a skirt above the knee when visiting a temple or Wat. Of course the fact that several major hotels catering to business clients are located conveniently in the red light district was a tad disturbing.
Our hotel, the Atlanta (which had a prominent sign SEX TOURIST NOT WELCOME”) had a beautiful old lobby with an art deco flair. The rooms were nothing special, but the staff was friendly and they agreed to keep our bag for 2 months. Hopefully it will be there when we return as we are both leaving behind our hiking shoes and John is opting to leave behind his sleeping bag as we don’t expect too many cold locations as we make a loop around SE Asia. We had hoped to get overnight train tickets here heading north to Chiang Mai and starting our big loop of SE Asia, but the holidays have thrown a wrench into our plans - no train tickets available and the embassy is closed for a week so we cannot get our Vietnam visas either. Time already for a new game plan.
