Thantip ...is the name of my drinking water

I've finally made it to Thailand, after a 13 hour flight, a 3 hour layover, and another 3 hour flight.  Got into my hotel at 1AM last night, fell asleep at 2, and woke up at 6AM to the sound of a thai voice repeating the same thing over and over again over an intercom.

I have to admit, I had so many one-liners to start this post out with, but frankly, I can't decide which one suffices the best, so I will say this first:  The moon is wrong here. 

It sits in the sky like a pregnant woman about to give birth, rather than the crescent which my brain knows and makes sense of.  Less poetically, the moon waxes and wanes horizontally, which is a concept I never thought I would need to wrap my brain around.  I didn't get a chance to take photos of it last night, but if I can see it tonight, I'm going to try and do some long-exposures and see if I can't capture it. 

Also, it's perishingly hot here.  I am only just tolerating the temperature, at 7:19 in the morning, because I am sitting outside the hotel with a giant fan directly in front of me, and my still-dripping hair is keeping me cool.  And I've just ordered "toast with butter and jam" ...which apparently actually translates to "4 pieces of white bread, margarine, and orange gelatin in a bowl that tastes like tang"  ...seriously.  I have a bright orange substance called "jam" sitting in a bowl, which tastes exactly like tang, of all things.  It's...well, I tried it on a knife, and it's weird.  Maybe I'll brave a bite of toast with it. 

My journey here was reasonably uneventful, insomuch as 19 hours in transit can go.  I was really nervous getting on the plane, a feeling which persisted most of my way here, and still lingers somewhat.  Toto, this ain't Kansas anymore.  I made friends with the two people next to me on the plane, but I spent most of the flight trying to stay in and out of sleep.

On my fancy little phone I made a few notes of things I wanted to mention that I saw during the flight, as by the time I get around to writing these blogs my brain is completely dead, and I forget half the wonderful moments I've experienced.  We flew over Alaska and across the Bering Strait, chasing the sunset backwards across the globe - the sun never set until we reached Japan.  There were clouds for much of the trip, but for both Alaska and Japan, the skies cleared up, and I spent those portions of the flight with my face pressed against the window.  Silly me, I got a window seat on a 13 hour flight.  I never do that - I don't know what I was thinking.  I spent some time watching some foreign films too - a French one called Tous les Soleils, and a Mandarin one called The Star and the Sea (I think...I forgot to write it down) ...both were really good.

 (poor phone camera attempts at Alaska, and Anchorage)

Hong Kong airport is CRAZY.  It's gigantic, and yes, the first two things I did were purchase Starbucks and go price Canon dSLR's.  It might not actually be worth it to buy the 60D (or the 5D, for that matter) in the HK airport - the price difference is very comparable to the cost of getting it back home.

I got watermelon juice at Starbucks!  ...and Hong Kong dollars are crazy looking.  I took a picture.  I went to a currency exchange, and exchanged 500 baht for some HK money, just so I could kill some time without using my credit card.  ...I still have to call one of them, kinda dropped the ball on that one.

Magically, somehow, I managed to get the flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok with no one beside me - it was glorious to stretch out across three seats for three hours.  I didn't even eat the in-flight meal.  Who eats at 11pm anyhow?

So that kinda leads me to now.  I'm staying in the Plai Garden, which looks fantastic on the website, and is quite sketchy in actuality.  I'm on the 5th floor, in a room that I would die in without AC, with no wifi (unless I sit right against my door) ...and I just paid 150 baht for toast with tang gelatin.  Which isn't terrible on toast in a thin veneer, slathered with margarine, but I'm not eating it again, either. 

Here's to finding my way into Bangkok without issue, to not sweltering in the heat, and to finding a better place to stay closer to the city centre!  If all goes well, I might take some photos at night tonight, perhaps search out the location of the DJ Bed Supperclub (there is a UK band playing there tonight) ...or perhaps I'll finally get sleepy and try and get more than 4 hours of sleep over 2 days.