Fast food Bangkok style

A photo of french fries gave us a craving for the little potatos this evening so we treked a couple blocks over to the local McDonalds for dinner. Alas, it was closed awaiting a reopening sometime this week after renovations. So we decided to walk across the street to KFC (there's more US fast food in Bangkok than in the US, I swear). KFC's fine, but the chicken wasn't original recipe or extra spicy, it was like curry spicy! Not bad, but different. We didn't eat much so we could save room for some Bangkok fast food: noodles on the street. $1.50 for two bowls of noodles and a coke.

Settling in

We're starting to get more settled in here. We signed up for the gym and got cell phones over the weekend, signed up for DSL this morning, bought a TV this evening and will get our cable connected soon. We're jetting around town on Bangkok's new Sky Train which really is pretty fabulous. It's a great subway system (but above ground), nice and clean and quick, diametrically opposed to the traffic down below which is horrendously jammed up most of the time. I'm starting to see why hardly anybody has a car around here.

Still trying to find an adapter for my camera cable so i can get some pictures on here!

Snoozing in

We got to bed about 2:00 am last night, not too bad, and I figured I'd wake up around 10:00 am or so. Woke up at 5:00 pm. I think that may be a new record for me. I think it wasn't so much that I was jetlagged, though I was, but also that I was working off some sleep debt from the past few weeks. It's nice to be finished with all the stuff we were trying to get done in DC before we left, and I haven't started my new job yet so no stress from there yet.

We walked around our neighborhood a bit tonight (after getting some food, almost 24 hours since dinner yesterday). Across Sukhumvit is the Middle Eastern area and we actually couldn't find a Thai restaurant over there, just Egyptian, pakistani, etc. Finally found one, but then went back and got a shawarma from one of the Arab stands. gotta like that.

It's funny but there are just not a lot of Thais around here who aren't working the expat scene. We've gotta get out of this area and see where normal Thais live and work.

We're in

Dung and I got in late last night, everybody survived the trip including both Mr. Black and Mr. White. they were none too pleased about the trip and made sure everyone in the terminal knew it, but there you go. While I was checking in the cats with animal control at the airport I met a Mexican family bringing their dog through, so I got to introduce my gatos mexicanos to them. they thought that was a kick. Got to speak Spanish and Thai at the same time, threw me for a little loop.

We got in to our new apartment about 1:00 am, checked it out then went straight to bed. Except we weren't all that tired since we slept on the plane, but surprisingly enough I slept until about 10:00. Hit the Embassy to do some checking in, then came back for a nap. About 3:00 pm I was starting to rapidly lose IQ points so I bailed. Nobody'd really expected me to come in anyway.

Our sponsor here left us a note that she'd take us out for dinner tonight, but we never did hook up. Maybe because we have only one phone in the place and you can't hear it from the bedroom. At any rate, we found a place in the guidebook that we got from the Embassy, not too far away. Great Thai food, maybe the best curry I ever had. Baan Khanitha if you're curious. then we walked around a bit, got to know our little neighborhood a bit better. Sukhumvit's a busy street, day or night.

Dung has been busting out her Thai with greater gusto than I, she has no fear. So far we've been mostly understood which is great. Next battle is to understand what everybody else is saying to us.

Tokyo

We just got into Tokyo, 4:30 pm local time, close to midnight or so back home. We managed to get a few hours sleep on the flight from Chicago, seats were nice and comfy. This is an interesting experience actually. After the last few weeks of running around in a panic trying to get things done before we leave, we're now in a situation where there's nothing to do but hang out, eat, read, sleep and watch movies. A vacation of sorts, but in a pretty narrow area.

We're in business class for this flight, a gift from Colin Powell who got the Department to pony up the money for these long flights. This is Dung's first experience in it, and she's got the seat in ultra-flat mode to snooze that much better. It does make a huge difference for sleeping.

We're getting into Bangkok late, like about 11:00 pm, so time to get some sleep on the next flight so we don't show up too exhausted. By the time we get in, get luggage, get to our place and get set up it's going to be 2:00 am, so we gotta be ready.

More later, hope we can find wireless in Bangkok.....

Chicago

We're about 5% of the way to Bangkok. Our first layover is in Chicago for two hours so we're hanging out in the Red Carpet Lounge using T-Mobile's WiFi ($6 for the day). Hopefully we'll be able to use it in Tokyo, too.

This morning turned out to be mostly painless. The cats got in their cages with a minimum of hassle, we made it to the airport with no traffic, got the rental car returned fine, then checked in. The guy at the United counter spent about 40 minutes getting all our bags, tickets and the cats ready to travel, then we had to go over to TSA where I had to take the cats out so they could inspect the kennels. That was the last fear, that they'd escape and bolt around the airport but nothing happened in the end. United didn't even ask for the cats' shot records and health certificate, but who knows maybe we'll need them in Bangkok. Better to have them than not.

Looking forward to 14 hours on the flight to Tokyo and at least three movies. Dung's looking forward to more uninterrupted sleep.

Moving to Bangkok

If you're reading this, you probably just got our email announcing our imminent departure for Bangkok. With any luck we'll be able to keep up with the blog and stay in better touch with everyone this way. We might not always get around to sending individual emails, but if you're interested in finding out what's going on with us in Thailand, just click on the blog and we'll have pictures and stories galore.

Also, take a look at the link on the right side for our calendar. We're hoping to get a slew of visitors and we're more than happy to put you up in our guest bedroom. Take a look at the calendar to make sure we don't double book you! Nobody's on there yet, so you've still got a chance to be the first to book....