saltwatersteve.com/travel

Staying up all night before we left on our trans-Pacific flight was clearly not a wise idea. I was fairly alert throughout the trip. However, all day yesterday in Bangkok I was kind of a zombie. The following is a brief synopsis of the trip so far.

2.5 Hour Flight, Denver-Seattle. Only thing to report is it was cool to see my sister Susan at the airport (very random and very short but good)!
10.5 Hour Flight, Seattle-Tokyo. This went OK as well, slept a bit, watched a movie or two, and read from my book.
Tokyo Airport. What a trip. At the gift shops they sell disturbing seafood products in vaccum-packed bags and Sony Laptops. We had to eat some sushi while we were in Japan, and it was a good thing they had 2 sushi places to choose from in our Concourse. The tuna and Salmon were noteworthy.
7 Hour Flight, Tokyo-Bangkok. This flight was delayed about an hour which meant that instead of getting in to Bangkok at 11:55 PM local time, we got in at almost 1 in the morning. Otherwise un-noteworthy other than the movie Rush Hour 3 is terrible. Let me guess - you didn’t know they even made a Rush Hour 2? Neither did I and now I know why.
Airport-Hotel in Bangkok. Caught a cab with pidgin English and got to the hotel but apparently they didn’t have our reservation. Internet didn’t work either but they at least came down off their rack rate and it wasn’t any more than we booked online after it was all said and done.

The next day we checked our email and found out that the online booking website had emailed to let us know that we, in fact did not have reservations. No kidding. And the hotel was booked solid that night so we had to call around and got another reservation. We left our big bags at the hotel.

We wandered around trying to find the Vietnamese embassy (we need Visas) but it was not clearly marked so we passed it 3 times before asking directions. They were closed for lunch. We found out from a nearby “express Visa” place that a next-day visa would be $100. We decided to take care of this in Cambodia. We did go next door to get our passport photos though. Wandering back from the embassy area, we stopped for lunch and got some really hot Thai curry. Mouth-rape hot. But sooooo tasty.

We got to the reserved hotel but they had given away our room. Great. Luckily down the road was another place and we got a room there. Then we went back to get our bags.

I need to hurry up because I’m running out of internet time.

Dinner was a much milder Green Thai Curry. Meghan had an odd-textured noodle soup.

Slept 9 or 10 hours that night and the included breakfast at our new hotel was great. We went to the train station to figure out tomorrow’s trip to Cambodia but couldn’t buy the tickets yet. We have to go tomorrow morning at 5:30 to buy them. A bit inconvenient. On the way home we ate some amazing Indian food and had our 1-hour Thai Massages for $6.00 each.