In October 2022 we left on a grand adventure. Do We have any other kind? 🙂 We took off on what became a seven month journey around S.E. Asia that ended in Tokyo, Japan. I previously posted the final four and a half days of the trip. Now lets go back to the beginning.
Anna and I have quite often talked about traveling to Thailand and the surrounding countries, but had never put it into concrete plans. Just by chance one day while visiting Bill and Roxane back in early 2022, Anna noticed some travel books for Thailand and S.E. Asian countries in their possession. Of course Anna queried Roxanne for the reason. Roxanne explained the trip was a bucket list item for Bill, but she had no interest in going and Bill had no one to go with. You can see where this is going. Within minutes, Anna had agreed to the trip and started planning dates and locations. For those who don’t know, Bill is Anna’s biological father and Roxanne her stepmother.
The plan was to leave in late October, visit Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. And due to family obligations, Bill needed to be back before Christmas. Roughly two months for Bill. We didn’t have the same obligations, so our trip was open ended. I mean why fly all that way if you’re not going to stay a while.
I loosely kept a journal on an app called FindPenquins. It’s a great travel journal app and I’ve started using it more and more. You can expand all the pictures by clicking on them, or you click on “read more” and it will link you to my FindPenguins site, where you can…. read more. I’ve added more narrative in this blog which adds extra detail to what I/we put in the app.
Bangkok Here We Come!
We got to our hotel pretty worn out from the trip, but excited just the same. A Popular party road called Khao San, was just around the corner, so we had to check it out. Many massage parlors (legitimate), tourist shops and cannabis stores lined the four block long road. Also vendors were walking up and down the road selling bar-b-queued tarantulas, roaches and scorpions. Yum! Since we’re vegan, we didn’t try any 😉
Our first full day in town, we got to see a little more of Bangkok.
Our second day we had to check out of the Airbnb, but our bus for Chiang Mai didn’t leave till the evening. We stored our bags and found some things to do. We got swindled into an overpriced tour. The tour was just fine, but we got talked into it by a guy on the street and paid probably twice as much as we should have. Oh well.
That evening we were on the first of many overnight bus rides across S.E. Asia, and in the morning we were in Chiang Mai.
We explored a little outside the walled city and planned for our next day adventures. That’s where Bill went on a mountain biking tour, while Anna and I went to see elephants and stuff.
And that was about it for Thailand. Our next country on the list is Laos.