Chitraroff Blog Thai Entry
Bangkok, Thailand, Day 1
Friday, 11/18
Hello (sa-wat-dee krub),
Well, we survived the 17 hour plane flight from LAX to Beijing to Bangkok. The strangest thing is that we started our journey at 8:30 Wednesday morning and we arrived at our hotel in Bangkok at 3:00 am Friday morning. We lost an entire day due to the time zones alone. Luckily, we get that day back upon our return to America.
Our China air plane flight from LAX to Beijing was a 12 hour leg. Luckily, each seat had private video screens with movies, TV shows, games and my favorite, an onboard navigation system that gave us all of the details of our flight. This kept the boys entertained nicely.
Leslie and I were amazed that our journey took us right past our meeting place of Arcata, CA along the west coast, across the Pacific Northwest and towards Alaska, Russia and beyond. For some reason, we thought that we would be heading towards Hawaii. My science mind was excited to see all of the specs of our flight like elevation, cruising temperature and flight speed.
Luckily, the seat layout was such that I could do some laps around the plane every couple of hours to relieve the dead leg syndrome from sitting on my butt so long. I also had the opportunity to finish a borrowed book from a friend titled, “Survival of the Sickest”. It was an enlightening book.
Our in-flight experience had one special highlight for me. The beverage cart had free beer which I took advantage of every time that cart rolled down my aisle. Can you believe it...FREE BEER on a flight! It seems like we were fed every couple of hours, so nobody really got hungry, except for Bodhi who complained that the meat and rice dish was rivaled wet cat food. Of course, I am an “opportunivore” so I ate every time there was food in front of me.
Our connecting flight in Beijing China was the most stressful event in our journey. We had to pass through customs and through security again in addition to changing to a terminal that was 1/2 mile away. Customs was slow and security was even slower. They went through our backpacks throroughly and demanded that we give them our back up power supply units for phone charging because they exceeded the 100mv requirement. We made it through security with only 10 minutes to spare to catch our connecting flight which was 1/2 mile away, so we ran! We felt like we were in the Amazing race, with all of our backpacks jostling about sprinting towards the terminal unaware if our connecting flight had already left or not. Fortunately, we arrived huffing and puffing with the knowledge that our flight was 15 minutes late...GASP! The air quality was so horrendous (thick of burning smoke) that Leslie had a major coughing spasm after our sprinting event. We still had to take a bus out to the tarmac to load up the stairs into our plane.
The flight from Beijing to Bangkok was only 5 hours, so our total flight time was 17 hours. Most of us slept on the last leg, so it passed quickly. We arrived in Bangkok and it was about 1:00 a.m. We caught a taxi to our hotel in Bangkok which only took about 45 minutes. I cannot express to you how wonderful it felt to get horizontal on a comfy bed after that journey. We crashed out!
Tomorrow would be an open day to explore the bustling city of Bangkok. Hopefully, we will encounter some unique Bangkok sights, smells and adventures.
Goodbye (Lah gorn krub) and thank you (Korp kun krub).
Much Love,
~The Chitraroff Family
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