Thursday, July 14. Bangkok, Thailand

We arrive around 3pm local time in Bangkok.

The 10+ hour flight went much better than we expected. The food was excellent -- you wouldn't have known the Pa-naeng Curry was an airline meal. Thai Airlines definitely has a better service than any of your American legacy airlines. Losts of smiles, making me question whether United Airlines really is the 'friendly skies'. We both also got a surprisingly descent amount of sleep on the flight -- somewhere around 5-6 hours each -- which made the flight not seem quite so long.

Walking out of the airplane we are greeted by a wave of warm, humid, tropical air. After all the hub-bub of moving we had finally arrived on what we hope to be the first of many epic journeys together. Stephen says, 'Wow, it smells like Bangkok' -- memories from his adventures here a couple years back with his buddy Mike come flooding back to him -- and so begins our 32-day journey through Northern Thailand and Laos.

As we made our way out of the airport, of course as Murphy's or Sod's Law would dictate, we ended up in the only immigration line that was not moving. But after a while we found our selves being stamped through without a word or second glance. Guess it's wasn't Americans that were holding up our line. We grabbed our already-awaiting bags from the Luggage carousel. Next was to find an ATM.

We found several ATM's at exchange and bank booths. We found the Bank ATM's only charged a straight fee of 150 Baht, while some of the Exchange ones wanted a percentage. Trip Lesson 1: While the Airport ATM is great and saves the time and expense of getting local currency before your arrival, they only seem to dispense in 1,000-Baht notes, which is roughly equivalent to a £20 note or $32. Given the local pricing of things, we knew this size note would be difficult to break. Thankfully later we learned that our Hotel was happy to do this for us.

We then made it out to the Public Taxi ranks, where we showed the name of our hotel and address and an airport employee writes the address in Thai for the driver. You have the choice of the driver running the meter (which the guidebook recommends), but then you have to pay 50-Baht airport tax and tolls from the highway on top of that. Stephen offered for a negotiated flat rate of 400-Baht for the 30+ mile journey, but the driver would bypass the traffic-ridden highway and get us there faster. We later read in the travel book on route that a typical rate for that journey was 250-Baht, so we didn't feel bad when the driver thought we were to go to Soi 16 instead of the actual location of Soi 5 and we had to sit through 20 min more of traffic to get us to the right place. This led us to Trip Lesson 2: Visit your hotel's website ahead of time and print out the directions in the local language to aid you in getting to the correct place. I had thought to do this ahead of time, but didn't bother since Stephen said they could translate for us at the airport. Next time I'll follow my gut.

Our hotel, the Bel Aire Princess Hotel -- I know the name is a bit much -- receiving great service from the Bellhop to our room where he explained all the features of the room. (I tipped him $1US, even though our guide book said it wasn't expected because he was just so helpful).

We then wandered around the area where our hotel is for a bit, checking out local restaurants and shops and getting a taste of the slightly more chaotic existence that is Bangkok -- something similarly found in thriving big cities in quasi-developed countries the world round. The moment you step out of the hotel you are greeted by two things: the immense humid heat and the chaotic buzz of street vendors, wall-to-wall traffic, and hot sweaty bodies moving along crowded walkways.

While it was all interesting to take in, I realised that after the jam-packed Israel Trip and the hectic 3 weeks of packing/moving I was looking forward to getting out of the big city on Saturday for a few weeks in a quieter setting to relax me a bit so I can fully appreciate when we come back for a week in Bangkok at the end of our tour.

We decided to head back to the room for a much-needed shower and a enjoyable and relaxing meal of some of our favourite Thai dishes at our hotel restaurant. The food was good, the Thai Iced Tea refreshing and fairly cheap by London standards even if it was a bit overpriced for Bangkok.

We ended up going to bed at a normal local time, circa midnight, but here I am up at 3am wide awake with jet lag blogging away. I guess I'm not quite as exhausted by the move as I thought.

I might try a bit of relaxing music and some prayer time before seeing if I can get back to sleep.

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