Apr 2008

It’s a bit delayed, but I am fulfilling my promise to update everyone on our safe arrival to Bangkok. We made it in one piece, but of course, not without some troubles. Brody was denied his boarding pass from our layover city (Melbourne, Australia) into Bangkok. The ticketing agents told him it was because he didn't have departure tickets. None of us did, so we aren’t sure why Brody was flagged. It’s a silly rule for a country that you can leave by land - which is what our plans are. Adam and I were informed that even though we had our boarding passes, we would most likely be turned away by the Thai customs officials and sent back to Australia. To avoid this, we all purchased very expensive but fully refundable tickets to Melbourne just so we could get into Thailand. The funny part of the story is that we weren't asked about return tickets once we got to the Bangkok airport. In fact, we weren’t asked much of anything and flew through customs. We thought it was better to be safe than sorry though.

We found a cab into backpacker central - KhoSan Road. This place is absolutely crazy all hours of the day. To add to the craziness, we happened to arrive in the in middle of the Thai New Year called Songkran. During this multi-day holiday, the locals throw water on each other and smear a white, chalky paste on anything that will stand still. This, and the fact that our hotel "Sawasdee Inn" has several sister hotels similarly named, made it incredibly difficult to find where we had booked a room. 45 minutes and 5 hotels later, we found our Sawasdee and fell asleep shortly after (but not before hitting the streets for some yummy Thai food since we were starving. Apparently, Jetstar Airlines does not feed their passengers. Even on 9-hour flights.)

The next day we found to be even more chaotic than the first. We walked around the city and were just drenched with water guns and buckets of ice water. Our white faces made us prime targets and if we weren’t being soaked, someone was rubbing white goo on our faces. It was just insane, but it gave us a fantastic introduction to the country. No time for culture shock.