The Green Hotel
Where my twelve dollar Thai political education began.
If you’re new here, start with the first story in this series: Barbed Wire And Red Shirts
Let’s start with the Green Hotel first, because the Green Hotel is where it begins. I arrived there in mid-February knowing nothing of Thailand’s political climate. I just needed a place to sleep for a few months while I trained at Sangmorakot, a nearby Muay Thai gym.
Within days, I learned what the Green Hotel was and wasn’t. It was where low-level politicians slept with prostitutes. It wasn’t where you took someone you loved. It was where you’d wake up to the sound of a man and his lady hot in the middle of a domestic dispute. It wasn’t where the cops would show up if you called them. It was also where this American stayed because it cost twelve dollars a night.
Anyone could walk up the two flights of stairs on either side of the L-shaped building and enter it. But come to think of it, you were never really “in” the hotel. Hotels in other parts of the city shielded you from Bangkok. The Green Hotel threw you further into it. Each room had a bathroom with open slotted windows at the tops of the walls. Whether your neighbor was showering or shitting, you could hear it all.
The only green thing about the Green Hotel were the letters on the double-sided lightbox that jutted from the outside wall. Otherwise, inside the rooms, everything was a shade of muted blue that would’ve made the set designers for The Brady Bunch green with envy. Turquoise blue tiles, powder blue walls, slate blue bathroom – even the light gave off a cool blue hue.
Wifi was still a luxury back then too. To go online, you had to cross the road and pay by the hour at the Internet cafe. When that closed, you were left with the only form of entertainment, an old box TV mounted to the wall of your room. But the two-foot fridge kept the drinks cold and the air conditioner kept me colder – even if the compressor sounded like a semi-truck.
Two weeks after I arrived, I woke up and the non-green hotel was no longer only blue. Leaving for my morning run, there I saw it against the concrete gray wall across the way – a single red shirt hanging from the balcony.
I had no idea what that shirt signified at the time, but I would soon find out.
Read the next story in this series: Sangmorakot Gym