Arrived in Bangkok, 13 November, 2008, after a long flight exacerbated by a few incidents like my seatmate dumping glass of OJ in my lap. Sticky all over plus it looked like I had wet myself. Ever change clothes in airplane bathroom? Had to wrestle my pack out of the overhead bins, fumble through to find clean pants while squatting in narrow aisle. But hey - it could've been hot coffee or a whole can of (wasted) beer, right? [This is a photo of my room in the Sri Ayutthaya Guesthouse in Bangkok.]I sorta screwed up in Seoul where I had ten hours to kill. Took a little rest on a comfy couch in the Transit lounge for long layovers, reorganized my stuff, freshened up, ate some of my food, etc. then walked around a bit, found my gate and settled in. While waiting for boarding time to start, I lay down again just for a sec with my head on my pack on three seats and promptly crashed. A flight attendant came over to wake me and see if I was going on the BKK flight as everyone had boarded and the plane was ready to take off - yikes! Luckily, there were a lot of empty seats on that particular 6-hr segment, so I continued my nap stretched out on three seats and landed in BKK not totally exhausted as one typically is. Trudi had made reservations for me at a nice guesthouse for two nights there which was fairly easy to find after taking the bus from the airport. The next day I walked around the neighborhood, listening to Thai conversations to stimulate my vocab memory from last year, and smelling lots of street food everywhere. It felt really good to be back here again altho anxious to be getting further north where it is cooler and less hectic in Chiang Mai.
NOTE: In retrospect, I was supremely lucky to arrive November 15th and escape the shutdown on the BKK airports nine days later on the 24th.
