The Journey - Whew! What a long day, though Evergreen Airlines treated us quite well. If we hadn't been positioned directly in front of a couple of agitated three year olds, the flight would have been sublime (by airline standards). We both still managed to squeeze in about three hours of sleep in between seemingly endless outbursts of every child's favorite word, "NO!" Otherwise, the food was edible and we finally caught up on a few films we've missed in theaters.
First Impressions: Bangkok - It's big. It's hot. It's incredibly international. I don't think I have ever heard so many languages being spoken in line for immigration, predominately Russian, German and dialects of Chinese. Thankfully, our bags arrived intact and we followed a nice German gentleman to the city train line to catch our first glimpses of the city.
These are no ordinary malls. More like a cross between a casino and the floor of a stock market. Five story buildings with no windows, narrow halls and tiny stalls selling everything from high end electronics to socks and underwear. Massage parlors too. One covered outdoor mall was so crowded, it had a traffic director barking orders to motorbikes, pedestrians, autos and even a crawling amputee beggar. After a heart pounding race through a few such places and practicing extreme j-walking (where you weave through passing motorcycles, buses and cars at "opportune" times) like true locals, our legs began to give out and the jagged sidewalks pounded our feet to a jet lagged pulp.
That's all for now, onto a full night of sleep I hope.