Thailand

Chinatown
Thai baby
Luke and I (and my new hair)
Royal Palace
Temple of the Emerald Buddha

October 30, 2009

I am currently sitting at the Hong Kong International Airport waiting to get on my final flight to Bangkok. It is a beautiful airport with even more beautiful scenery around it. The floor to ceiling glass windows give wonderful views of the mountains surrounding the airport on three sides and the Pacific Ocean on the other.

Johannesburg was wildly uninteresting. I got picked up from the airport and taken to Mzibi Backpackers, which is basically a fairly nice house that has been outfitted to accommodate guests. I got a free upgrade to a room with a queen-sized bed. I ventured out of the house only once to go grab a pizza at the local pizzeria. The rest of the time was spent watching satellite TV, sleeping, going on the internet and eating the snacks I had packed from Livingstone. It still managed to cost me around $75 for the two days but at least I was safe. I could not sleep on the flight (all twelve and a half hours of it). There was only two people in the middle four seats, which would have been great if the other five foot nothing woman did not decide she needed three seats to herself. I ended up watching movies, documentaries, comedy shows and playing some games that were included in the in-flight entertainment.

November 1, 2009

The flight to Bangkok went well and I made it to the Royal Hotel without incident. I met two of the other girls, Rachel and Becky, at the front desk and we went out for lunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping and then went down to the lobby at 8 pm to meet up with everyone else. There are eleven of us in total, two boys and nine girls. The age range is 18-26 and everyone else is from England. After getting slightly lost we backtracked and found the famous backpackers street, Khao San Road. We ate, wandered for a bit and then went to listen to some live music at a third floor bar.

Saturday morning I got up for breakfast and then attended the group meeting at 9:30. After a quick stop at the ATM, Luke and I went to the Royal Grand Palace to see the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Everything was plated in gold and was very ornate. It was quite stunning to be honest. After the temple we headed over to the dock to catch a boat to Chinatown. The boat cost us 13 Baht per person (about 50 cents). It was very crowded in Chinatown and we had trouble finding a restaurant so we hired a tut-tut (motorized three wheel vehicle) to take us back to the hotel.

After lunch and a nap we went back to Khao San Road. I bought a skirt and a couple of shirts and then decided to get my hair done. I paid way too much for it but wasn’t in the mood for bartering. My hair is now braided and reaches to my waist. There are even pieces of blue braided in. We then enjoyed dinner and went back to the hotel to drop off our bags. It was Halloween and even though we didn’t dress up we decided to go out. We went to a couple bars and headed back around 1:30 am. It was a really fun night.

This morning I ate breakfast and packed up. We were picked up around 1:30 pm and driven out to the Brown house. It is located about 12 km outside of Singburi. They cook three meals a day for us but it is all vegetarian. They have internet and a television. There are lock boxes for our stuff and we have keys to the rooms. The rooms have bunk beds in them and a bathroom with a shower and western style toilet. We took a quick look around the village today but it looks like we have a fun couple of weeks planned to get us acquainted with Thai culture.

That’s it for now. Miss you all!