Sawasdee

We spent 8 days in Bangkok and Pattaya in Thailand for our summer vacation. What. A. Trip. Mind you we weren't in the most picturesque of places, but I wouldn't trade meeting our new friends and seeing old friends for any amount of scenery. It's hard for me to have a physical sense of geography in Asia, when all my normal gauges are tuned to North American distances. Little did I know it was a six hour flight from Incheon Airport in Seoul to Bangkok. I believe it was also a three or four hour time difference. We were really in a time-warp, considering our Korean cell phones don't get a signal in other countries. Remember when there were no cell phones? Remember pay phones? It felt a little bit like that.

We left on Jeju Air. Had I known how long the flight would be, I would've possibly chosen a classier airline. This was much like flying Airtran all the way to Europe.

We arrived in Bangkok late, got our luggage and headed outside for a taxi. We were set up with a friendly driver who led us outside. We looked at a long row of shiny new cabs, and then my eyes settled on a busted looking vehicle at the end of the row with a bungee cord holding the trunk shut. 'I pity the poor sucker who gets THAT cab' I thought. And our driver unhinged the bungee cord and happily loaded in our luggage.

However disappointed I may have been in the degenerate cab, the driver was hilarious. He called us Mr. Chris and Miss Natalie. He often asked us if we felt happy and seemed up for a nice long chat. We buzzed along the freeway at high speeds and made good time into Bangkok.

Once we got there, we made our way to insane Khao San Road to get to our hotel. Picture a walking street filled with people as thick as mardi gras, but cars, tuk tuks and motorbikes still use it as well. Most of the time I thought we were going to accidentally take out a food stand or a vendor, but somehow we made two passes through the chaos. Finally, we found our hotel. Alas they had moved us to their sister hotel. We walked through a deserted market to get to our new destination.

Time for a celebratory drink.

During our celebratory drink, Chris had the pleasure of being 'had' over a game of rock, paper, scissors but this savvy lady. His losing status determined he was to purchase quite of few of her lovely roses.

the king: an avid photographer and quite the humanitarian, i hear.

A 'burglar' fully masked, working on electrical boxes in 100 degree heat plus humidity.

A temple. It was a national holiday, sadly I'm not sure which one, but everyone was visiting the temples.

Devotional flowers at the temple

Waiting for the bus to Pattaya

On the drive

There were so many of these billboards standing empty all the way to the beach. They were monumental in size.

And then Adrienne came!!

Friends we met: Kiran and Jas from the UK. Really made our trip.

Scott and Seo came from Hong Kong.

now THAT is a monsoon, my friends.

Chris on the back of the tuk tuk truck

Buddha outside our hotel, drinking fanta and eating bananas.

LEMURRRRRR!

ADRIENNE MEETS THE LEMURRRRR!

I am not a proponent of animals being used as performers. These little guys were irresistible. Their owners let you hold them and take three pictures. I nearly died when their soft, fleshy fingers wrapped around my thumb. They are easily the most fabulous creatures I have ever laid my hands on. Sorry animal lovers. I had to. I just had to.

This is how restaurants get around the holiday and continue selling alcohol. You get one of these nifty plastic cups to put your cup inside. Brilliant.

Pattaya

Street performers

tom yam soup...

...and smiling mushrooms

We got to spend some time at our friends' hotel. It was pretttttty nice. Note the parrots freely roaming the pool area.

Thailand was interesting. The smiles are endless, but everywhere you look strange things are happening... domestic violence is tucked in here and there. Police are lurking around. The sex industry is alive and well--actually, abundant. Everyone seems like they know some seedy secret that you're not allowed to hear. It was quite an experience.

At the end of our trip we headed off back to our little apartments in Seoul. It was a bizarre feeling to come home, considering "home" was Korea, not the U.S. It made me feel fairly displaced, but I was glad to see my kids and get back into the swing of things. Sawasdee!