Thailand: The Trip
Hello from Thailand! My Blogger interface seems to be stuck entirely in Thai so hopefully I push the right buttons to get this published!
It’s Friday night (29 Dec) in Chiang Mai, Ryne is out exploring the bar scene with Austin, and I am finally sitting down to type out every detail I can about our trip to Thailand. I meant to do this on our honeymoon to the Cook Islands last year but WiFi was rare and expensive, so I never got around to it, and it bums me out to have forgotten the little details. But Southeast Asia loves their Internet, so lets jump in!
The Trip:
Well I feel pretty fortunate that my plan for adjusting to Thailand time (Arizona time + 14 hours) worked out, so I feel justified in saying candidly: Alcohol. The answer to time change is alcohol, just that kind of slight buzz that makes you sleep at any time of day. We were ready to leave our house earlier than expected on the way to the airport, so we caught a Liverpool game at Rose and Crown at 1pm and beers at Phoenix Ale before our flight. Once we were in LA with the Rondemas, we “kept it going” a bit (ahem, tequila shots) and suddenly, I was falling asleep on the plane to Beijing before the plane even took off. Really uneventful and relatively comfortable flight on China Air, we slept almost the entire time and woke up semi-adjusted. I was pretty nervous about this flight; on our honeymoon I woke up over the Pacific Ocean panicking a little bit (there’s just... nothing but water out there. For SO MANY MILES) and every small noise and light just made it worse. So yeah, major thanks to sleeping masks, ear plugs, and IPAs for helping me avoid a repeat experience. We took that cool route up and over Alaska, Russia, and North Korea (!) that makes you think, “Damn Earth, yo curvature is crazy”.
Beijing:
Not a ton to say about Beijing, because we were groggy and moving into the right terminal for our flight took up our entire layover. I personally think that from above, the city of Beijing reminds me geographically of Idaho Falls... Ryne thought that was crazy but then we realized the two cities are at really not-so-super-different latitudes. We’re really excited for our long layover on the way back so we get to explore it more. The only thing super notable about Beijing was how eerily quiet the airport was, with hundreds of people in line for customs. I slept most of this flight too.
Thailand!
We finally landed in Thailand at 1pm 24 Dec, which is 11pm 23 Dec for Arizona, which means we traveled for a total of.... 30 hours? And lost all but about... 40 minutes of 23 Dec by crossing the international Date Line. I honestly don’t remember the details too well. It’s all written down in my Travel Notebook but honestly, long travel time is the worst part of trips like this and what’s done is done so #letitgo. We pretty quickly found an Uber at the Bangkok airport, allowing us to avoid the whole metered taxi situation, and got on over to our first hotel near the famous Khao San Road.
This particular blog entry has been especially brief and lacking of details, but... it’s international travel. It sucks. I was buzzed or asleep for most of it, and my body was transported in the meantime. That’s enough detail for me :)
It’s Friday night (29 Dec) in Chiang Mai, Ryne is out exploring the bar scene with Austin, and I am finally sitting down to type out every detail I can about our trip to Thailand. I meant to do this on our honeymoon to the Cook Islands last year but WiFi was rare and expensive, so I never got around to it, and it bums me out to have forgotten the little details. But Southeast Asia loves their Internet, so lets jump in!
The Trip:
Well I feel pretty fortunate that my plan for adjusting to Thailand time (Arizona time + 14 hours) worked out, so I feel justified in saying candidly: Alcohol. The answer to time change is alcohol, just that kind of slight buzz that makes you sleep at any time of day. We were ready to leave our house earlier than expected on the way to the airport, so we caught a Liverpool game at Rose and Crown at 1pm and beers at Phoenix Ale before our flight. Once we were in LA with the Rondemas, we “kept it going” a bit (ahem, tequila shots) and suddenly, I was falling asleep on the plane to Beijing before the plane even took off. Really uneventful and relatively comfortable flight on China Air, we slept almost the entire time and woke up semi-adjusted. I was pretty nervous about this flight; on our honeymoon I woke up over the Pacific Ocean panicking a little bit (there’s just... nothing but water out there. For SO MANY MILES) and every small noise and light just made it worse. So yeah, major thanks to sleeping masks, ear plugs, and IPAs for helping me avoid a repeat experience. We took that cool route up and over Alaska, Russia, and North Korea (!) that makes you think, “Damn Earth, yo curvature is crazy”.
Beijing:
Not a ton to say about Beijing, because we were groggy and moving into the right terminal for our flight took up our entire layover. I personally think that from above, the city of Beijing reminds me geographically of Idaho Falls... Ryne thought that was crazy but then we realized the two cities are at really not-so-super-different latitudes. We’re really excited for our long layover on the way back so we get to explore it more. The only thing super notable about Beijing was how eerily quiet the airport was, with hundreds of people in line for customs. I slept most of this flight too.
Thailand!
We finally landed in Thailand at 1pm 24 Dec, which is 11pm 23 Dec for Arizona, which means we traveled for a total of.... 30 hours? And lost all but about... 40 minutes of 23 Dec by crossing the international Date Line. I honestly don’t remember the details too well. It’s all written down in my Travel Notebook but honestly, long travel time is the worst part of trips like this and what’s done is done so #letitgo. We pretty quickly found an Uber at the Bangkok airport, allowing us to avoid the whole metered taxi situation, and got on over to our first hotel near the famous Khao San Road.
This particular blog entry has been especially brief and lacking of details, but... it’s international travel. It sucks. I was buzzed or asleep for most of it, and my body was transported in the meantime. That’s enough detail for me :)
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