Traveling to Thailand

A couple of years ago, Jimi (aka Pops) and I took a trip Traveling to Thailand and Cambodia. I never really posted much about this trip. In fact, there are a lot of vacations in the last few years that I don’t seem to have posted much about. I was a lazy travel blogger you could say. So now, I’m going to be starting a series that I’m going to call “Re-Visit Posts” where I will re-visit and hence get to virtually re-live these travels. My hope in sharing my visions of these travels through the photos and experiences we had in these places is to encourage others to travel to these destinations too.

A big part of our lives is traveling – especially since Jimi retired from teaching 8 years ago. In fact, I cannot remember a time when we didn’t have at least one set of plane tickets for an upcoming adventure purchased. We currently have a really big trip we’re taking this fall that I will share more with you on later.

Some trips are more local or within California and the U.S. while others are lovely international affairs. The trip to Thailand and Cambodia would be considered one of the latter.

Let me start by letting you know that I am seriously not the best flyer out there (spoken like a true travel blogger, I know). While the flight from San Jose to Los Angeles was fine, the long flight from LAX to Taipei was also okay though long, but the first 45 minutes of the flight from Taipei to Bangkok was pretty much the scariest 45 minutes of my life!! Now, was I just exhausted from so many hours of travel, irritated by the person next to me who ate fish every meal for 13 hours or ??? All I know is I gripped the armrests of my seat, closed my eyes tight and prayed knowing that if I lost it I would never get IT back!

Why am I sharing this? Well, because it was unfortunately a significant part of starting this trip. Seriously though, after that awful 45 minutes, the flight was as smooth a flight as I’ve ever been on.

As I was entering the land of Buddhism, was there a lesson about impermanence and how everything changes including crazy, bouncing flights in this for me?

Luckily, we made it to Bangkok in one piece, found the Travel Company person at the airport and easily got to our hotel (though at some crazy middle-of-the-night hour).

Side Note: Did I tell you we tour with Gate 1 Travel a lot? We have taken many tours with them and have met people who have taken many more than we have with them and none of us have ever been disappointed! AND no, this is not a sponsored post in any way!

Bangkok

Okay, so Bangkok….it’s hot there – I mean really humid hot (and we were there in their winter). Hot like you don’t know hot (and I’ve lived in Florida without air conditioning in my apartment or car). It’s dirty, it’s loud, it’s madness and yet its EXHILARATING!! I love this city. I love it for it’s congestion, I love it for it’s heat, I love it for it’s madness, for it’s $3 US massages, for it’s fabulous temples, for it’s beauty in the incredibly kind people that live there, for it’s delicious food, – well, I just LOVE IT!

But yes, it’s HOT! So don’t travel there without knowing this. Know this, but go anyway. Know this but don’t let it become a thing on your trip. Just go there and live it.

Also, when we were there, it was the King of Thailand’s birthday so you may notice a lot of the color “yellow” in my photographs. It’s apparently HIS color, so people hang flags everywhere in that color and they also wear that color clothing a lot at this time of year. It was a very special experience to see the love the people of Thailand have for their King.

There is so much to see in Bangkok. In fact, our whole trip could’ve probably been spent just there, but, alas, we were only there a couple of days before our tour took us out of this amazing City. While we were there, aside from the views driving around this city, here’s what we saw on Day 1:

The Wholesale Flower Market

Gorgeous, fresh flowers are everywhere in Thailand. They’re left at shrines, temples and by statues. We were told EVERYTHING grows in Thailand due to it’s climate and luckily it’s soil and truly, I believe it!

Wat Po

Wat (meaning temple) Po the home of the Reclining Buddha was our next stop in Bangkok.

I didn’t have enough room to shoot and/or the right lense to get the whole statue in my shot.

The Buddha is 160 feet long and 40 feet high. And while we’re talking feet, check out the carvings on the statue’s feet – they’re gorgeous.

After our first temple and famous Buddha statue viewing, we went for an evening at one of the most famous stage shows in the world called the Siam Niramit.

The show shares the story of Thai history and Thai culture and has amazing stage production, effects and music. They won’t let you take your cameras inside the show, but here is a quick pre-show shot taken outside the theatre.

That was day one of our tour in Bangkok. I’ll be working on the next day/days of this trip and also adding all the other trips I neglected to seriously blog about soon. I hope you’ll follow along.