I’ve been walking around a lot, looking for an apartment. My experience reminds me of a book I recently read, called “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,” about an autistic boy who is completely logical, and unable to understand illogical emotions such as love and friendship. It’s a good read.

The part I was reminded of was when he was lost by himself trying to find the train station. Instead of trying to talk to a confusing person, he does a manual search in the most efficient way: by walking in a spiral from his starting point. He quickly finds the station this way.

This is indeed logical in the West, where streets are generally laid out in a grid. But saying that Bangkok is “laid out” is totally inaccurate. Bangkok is fascinating from an urban planning standpoint because it’s a perfect case study of what happens if there is no planning at all. One of the consequences is that the streets don’t make any sense.

There are main roads, and there are smaller roads off of these, called sois. Then there are sub-sois off of the main sois. The sub-sois are very narrow alleys that don’t go anywhere. If you want to get over to the next parallel soi, you have to either go back to the main road, or continue a huge distance to the next main road. There are no blocks as we know them. Hence, due to the massive distances between main roads, the spiral search would take a huge amount of time.

I now realize that the sub-sois are where the best places to live are hidden. Walking down the main roads and sois, all you find are huge, opulent condos and “suicide mansions.” But as soon as you turn down a subsoi, even in the busiest parts of the city, you enter an alternate world. It’s calm, peaceful, and leafy. Instead of shops and condo towers, there are houses and small condos. Unfortunately, everything is walled off, so walking down a subsois is like wandering in a maze.

I was wandering the sois near Silom when I wandered into a really nice little apartment. It’s in a cute little building, has hardwood floors, a marble finished bathroom, and TV, fridge, and microwave. It was really nice, and the price was reasonable, their initial offer was 10,000 baht, the most I want to pay. The location is incredible, too, about a five minute walk from the Skytrain station. Unfortunately, it’s pretty small.

So, for about the same price, I can get a no frills, decent-sized, but empty room near Victory Monument, or a tiny, well stocked, luxurious room in Silom. They are both about the same distance from work.

I’m going to do a more thorough search of the sub-sois near work, but all the walking is killing me. Walking in Bangkok is not a good thing, due to the heat and humidity.

Thursday a Thai friend is going to help me talk to my landlords. Maybe if I give them 30 days notice, they will give me some of my deposit back. If not, mai bpen rai, I suppose.