January 5-7, 2018

January 5-7, 2018

Aimee and I are feeling a little deja-vu. We seem to be in the process of repeating our trip from last January. We again take an evening flight to LAX, eat a pizza dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s, and then endure a long TSA line before we catch a tediously long flight to China. Shanghai, China this time, not Taiwan. Thankfully the pilot skirted North Korea. I guess Kim Jong-un makes the Chinese nervous too. Like last year our China stop is merely a transit hub for a connecting flight to Southeast Asia. We are continuing where we left off last year and moving west from Vietnam and Cambodia to Thailand. Just after noon we land in the capital city of Bangkok. We are weary from almost two days of travel. A brutal way to start a vacation.

We take a taxi to our hotel passing hundreds of high-rises with many more under construction. Bangkok must be booming. We like one in particular that looks like it has pieces missing.

After checking in to our riverfront hotel we take the hotel courtesy boat about a mile up the Chao Phraya River. An appropriate way to start a tour of Bangkok, as it used to be called the Venice of the East. Most of the canals have now been filled in and paved over.

The weather in Bangkok is warm but the humidity is stifling. Back at the hotel we walk next-door to the “Asiatique” night market. It is a mixture of crowded bazaar and touristy restaurants. One vendor was selling deep-fried maggots, grasshoppers, and “Scorpion on a Stick”. We settled for the familiar. A delicious Thai Green Curry washed down with the local Singh beer. And then it is very early to bed for us jet-lagged tourists.