Hello hello hello. Merry belated Christmas and happy new year to you all. At the moment it feels more like Thanksgiving to me because I'm so filled with gratitude for the wonderful vacation I just concluded with Max, Owen, Darcy, and Eddie in Thailand. We were there for 9-10 days depending on how you count your international date line and had an absolutely marvelous thaime!
Each day was so jam-packed with fun, beauty, and new experiences that it felt like a week. I remember on the evening of our first day, in Bangkok, when we were on a night bicycle tour of the city, we returned at one point to a place we'd been earlier that morning just after breakfast. I said to our guide, "Oh yeah, we were here before..." and I paused to think how many days ago that had been and it had just been that very morning! For that reason I'm going to have to break up my posts about our trip into smaller digestible (and manageable to tackle from a writing standpoint) chunks, because I don't want to leave out any of the great memories I have.
This post will be an overview of our adventure and then I'll address the details of different aspects of our adventure in future posts since I still have another week of winter break left before we start Term 3 here.
I left here the morning of Wednesday, Dec 21 and flew on China Southern airlines to Bangkok via Guangzhou, China, which is right near Hong Kong. So now I've been to China in the same way I've been to Texas, which is by changing planes in Houston once or twice. My airline ticket from here was pretty cheap (about $272) even though that's more expensive than usual due to the holiday season. I could definitely see returning to Thailand for more vacation time in the future!
I got in to Bangkok about 6:00 p.m. It was about a 3.5 hr flight to Guangzhou and then another two hour flight to Bangkok with a brief layover. Also Seoul is two hours ahead of Bangkok. It was quite cold (around freezing) the morning I left Seoul and walked to the subway station about 1 km from school to ride that to the airport, so it was a pleasant change to arrive in Bangkok where it was in the mid 80s. I ended up taking a "limo" (Mercedes SUV) into town to our hotel because as I exited the customs area (by the way, I never went through a quicker, more hassle-free immigration and customs experience than I did in Bangkok, both ways: no line, they just wave you through, and in customs I don't even remember anyone there to wave at you) and started inquiring about taxis a salesperson at the limo stand convinced me that there would be a long line waiting at the taxi stand (I have no idea if that was correct or not) and blah blah blah, the next thing I knew they had my credit card and signed me up. I ended up paying about $45 for my ride into town which was about 3 times what it cost Darcy, Eddie, Owen, and Max to all take a regular taxi together when they arrived later but who cares! I was on vacation! I've been saving money like crazy due to having no expenses other than food here in Korea and most of that (my free lunches and super-cheap subsidized dinner plan) is next to nothing. So I had money burning a hole in my pocket and everything else in Thailand would turn out to be super inexpensive as well.
It took about an hour to get from the airport to my hotel because the traffic was pretty jammed at that time. And what crazy traffic in Bangkok! Soooo many scooters and motorcycles and tuk-tuks (more about those later!) weaving among the cars. Not many bicycles, however. They've probably all been eliminated by natural selection.
After I checked in I went for a little walk around the neighborhood which was quite nice, being in an old part of the city on a bend in the river and filled with little alleys full of shops and restaurants with lots of other tourists and Thais alike milling through them.
Then I went back to the hotel to await the arrival of Darcy, Eddie, Owen, and Max. I was really looking forward to seeing them so I was trying to stay awake until they got there (their plane was originally due at 11:30 p.m. so I figured they'd be at the hotel around 12:30) so I was reading for a while but when I checked their flight info online I saw they'd been delayed half an hour on takeoff from their connecting flight in Japan and eventually I fell asleep. But shortly after that I was awakened by a knock on the door and there they were! It was great to see them. We got them settled in and I caught up a little with Owen and Max who were sharing a room with me and we probably all finally fell asleep around 2:00 or 2:30 a.m. on the morning of Dec 22, with plans to be up by 6:30 to start our first day in Bangkok!
Now I'd better go into Outline mode to let you know what to look forward to in future posts:
Day 1 (Bangkok): We start the day walking to the Grand Palace (including textile and coin museums) and experience our first tuk-tuk rides as we visit the Jim Thompson house. We end the day with a night tour by bicycle Everything was a highlight.
Day 2 (Bangkok to Pranburi): We start the day walking, intending to go to another temple (whose name I forgot but it's supposed to have 300 steps you get to climb - yippee?) but get diverted by a common scam and end up riding another tuk-tuk to the standing Buddha temple instead. More about this adventure later but we ended up back at our hotel, where we had already checked out but left our bags, in time to meet our taxi ride to Pranburi (just south of Hua Hin, "the Riviera of Thailand", approx. 3 hr drive south on the coast of the gulf of Thailand) which I had earlier arranged through the kiteboard school, KBA (Kiteboarding Asia), we were planning to patronize. After we checked into our hotel in Pranburi we took a walk along the coast into town, explored briefly, and found a nice local place to have some dinner.
Day 3 (Pranburi for the rest of the trip): Borrowed the resort's bicycles to bicycle all over the local area. Checked in with the kiteboard school, arranged scooters to be delivered to our hotel the following morning for all of us (!!), enjoyed the beach, and went to the "cable park" where the boys took turns riding wakeboards while being towed from an overhead cable. Dinner at hotel. And I think this is the night we tried playing Hearts but made the mistake (since we had 5 players and two cards left over after we dealt each hand) that we should be turning one up for trump. Yes, Trump is a mistake (ba dum ching!).
Day 4: Scooters arrived in the morning. Everything we arranged on the trip was provided on time and with excellent quality. That includes the hotels, taxi rides, scooter rentals, and kiteboarding lessons. Terrific service! I write like Trump! We rode the scooters south along the coast to Dolphin Bay where we had been told it was possible to rent stand up paddleboards and paddle out to Monkey Island, where they have monkeys (huh, who would have guessed?) who won't bother you if you don't have food. We didn't end up doing that because by the time we got down there (after stopping again at the headlands from the day before and climbing to the top of the hill this time) and had looked around it was already the middle of the afternoon and the waves and wind were up and Monkey Island looked like a pretty fair distance across the open water. Food, cocktails, and relaxing on the beach instead (better idea), then scooting back to our hotel in the beautiful evening light. (Dinner at hotel again)
Day 5: Scooting back down south again but this time to a national park for hiking and caves (with a little boat trip thrown in on the return and some great pineapple smoothies). Returning in the late afternoon we visit a roadside market then stop at a really nice restaurant on the coast at the north end of Dolphin Bay. Later I go out to the "Very Good" restaurant with Owen for dinner since he had remained behind at the hotel that day with a fever.
Day 6: Kiteboarding lessons in morning and afternoon for Owen, Max, and Chris. A relaxing time at the laundromat for Darcy and Eddie. That evening we all go to "Very Good" together. Service is slow but food is "very good", beer is cold, and you couldn't ask for a better location!
Day 7: Ditto kiteboarding, ditto laundromat. According to Darcy, the laundromat was a very relaxing experience! Everyone except Owen gets a massage before dinner, which we have at "Im Sook" (or something like that: they don't have sign) near Very Good but, according to one of our kiteboarding instructors, "where Very Good is for the tourists, Im Sook is for the locals".
Day 8: Final day in Pranburi! So sad. We change rooms in the morning because we are leaving for return taxi trip to Bankok airport at 1:00 a.m. the next day and I hadn't booked a room for that night, not being sure exactly how we were going to play that, but finally decided that we wanted a place to try to nap or sleep a little before departure. However our first rooms were already booked for our final night so we had to move to new rooms. Final Kiteboarding in morning for C, M, O. We all meet at hotel and go on final group scooter ride to the mangrove forest national park just north of where we are staying, where the local river wends its way to the coast. On the way back we stop late in the afternoon at a delightful roadside restaurant which definitely wasn't a tourist place. Sad now because we have to turn in our scooters and the trip was almost over. Chris, Owen, and Max go out for late dinner by bicycle (memories of our first day on the beach, which seem so long ago now!) and try yet another roadside stand a bit further down the beach from Very Good and Im Sook. It wasn't as good as those but I'll take it any night of the week, especially with the company of my boys!
Day 9: Alarm goes off at 12:45 am. Wake up and carry bags to waiting taxi. Depart 1:00 am. Arrive Bangkok airport 4:00 am. as promised. Have to say goodbye to family as their flight leaves first at 7:20 am! Waah! Parting is such sweet sorrow! My first flight leaves at 8:40 am. Change in China. Sorry China, I didn't vote for him! Back to Incheon International about 8:45 pm. It's 17 degrees outside and I see it snowed while I was gone (but not much) because there are a few small unmelted drifts where it's been plowed. 30 minute line to get through immigration. We're not in Thailand anymore! Subway home. I wish it were a tuk-tuk. Pull out hoodie for final kilometer walk to my room. It's over. Sleep.
Guys, I miss you!
