Hello, Bangkok.
Work has sent me to Bangkok for a week-long meeting, and thus, the blog is revived. (No promises that these posts will be thrilling, though.) Check out pictures here, since I can't seem to figure out how to link Google+ pictures to Blogger. Dulles to Tokyo to Bangkok took almost exactly 24 hours, and I arrived at my hotel around midnight, which felt like noon thanks to the time difference. I had heard stories about Bangkok traffic, but wasn't fully prepared for red lights that lasted close to 5 minutes, and mopeds and people wandering through traffic. The hotel our conference is in is massive - I'm on floor 14 of 35. No complaints about my digs for the week - the suite has to be about the same size as my apartment.
I successfully slept from about 3-6am, took advantage of my trusty Kindle until I got too hungry to stay in bed anymore, and after breakfast, went to the gym for a while in an attempt to shake off the inactivity of so many hours on a plane. By then it was lunch time, so I wandered down the street from the hotel to a small outdoor restaurant called Bus Stop and had my first authentic Pad Thai. A few coworkers had gone into the city ahead of me and we had arranged to try to meet at the Grand Palace around 2. Wishful thinking - 'grand' doesn't even begin to describe that place, and though I kept a lookout, I knew as soon as I got there that I wouldn't find them. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. My favorite part was actually the Museum of Textiles, established by Queen Sirikit following her role in reviving traditional Thai attire. An hour in the nearly 90 degree heat and being required to wear a cardigan to keep my shoulders covered, and I was ready to head back to the hotel. I wasn't really prepared for the detour on the way.
For reasons I couldn't quite understand, my taxi driver insisted on dropping me off at the Gem Gallery on my way back to the hotel, a large jewelry store that claims to be the biggest in the world, AND offers a free soda as you walk in the door (Fanta for me, please). He said I needed to stay in there for 20 minutes, and that I didn't have to buy anything, but if I let him take me there, he would take me to the hotel for only 100 baht (a little more than $3). I'd already had one taxi driver turn me down when he quoted a price twice as high as what I'd paid to get to the palace, so decided I'd go with it and enjoy the random experience. There certainly were more jewels than I'd ever seen in one place, but in my jet lagged haze I just wandered around, half-seeing the goods, half checking my watch to see if it was time to get back in the taxi yet. He reappeared close to half an hour later, and now I'm back at the hotel, trying to stay awake until dinner. The conference starts at 8:30am tomorrow, so I need to beat this jet lag as soon as possible!
The majority of this week will be spent in meetings, but we do have a dinner cruise on the river scheduled for Tuesday night, so I'll get to see more of Bangkok then. This weekend I'll head up to Chiangmai for a few days with a coworker before we head home on Tuesday. So, you can probably expect one more post while I'm here, and one about Chiangmai when I get back to DC.
I successfully slept from about 3-6am, took advantage of my trusty Kindle until I got too hungry to stay in bed anymore, and after breakfast, went to the gym for a while in an attempt to shake off the inactivity of so many hours on a plane. By then it was lunch time, so I wandered down the street from the hotel to a small outdoor restaurant called Bus Stop and had my first authentic Pad Thai. A few coworkers had gone into the city ahead of me and we had arranged to try to meet at the Grand Palace around 2. Wishful thinking - 'grand' doesn't even begin to describe that place, and though I kept a lookout, I knew as soon as I got there that I wouldn't find them. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. My favorite part was actually the Museum of Textiles, established by Queen Sirikit following her role in reviving traditional Thai attire. An hour in the nearly 90 degree heat and being required to wear a cardigan to keep my shoulders covered, and I was ready to head back to the hotel. I wasn't really prepared for the detour on the way.
For reasons I couldn't quite understand, my taxi driver insisted on dropping me off at the Gem Gallery on my way back to the hotel, a large jewelry store that claims to be the biggest in the world, AND offers a free soda as you walk in the door (Fanta for me, please). He said I needed to stay in there for 20 minutes, and that I didn't have to buy anything, but if I let him take me there, he would take me to the hotel for only 100 baht (a little more than $3). I'd already had one taxi driver turn me down when he quoted a price twice as high as what I'd paid to get to the palace, so decided I'd go with it and enjoy the random experience. There certainly were more jewels than I'd ever seen in one place, but in my jet lagged haze I just wandered around, half-seeing the goods, half checking my watch to see if it was time to get back in the taxi yet. He reappeared close to half an hour later, and now I'm back at the hotel, trying to stay awake until dinner. The conference starts at 8:30am tomorrow, so I need to beat this jet lag as soon as possible!
The majority of this week will be spent in meetings, but we do have a dinner cruise on the river scheduled for Tuesday night, so I'll get to see more of Bangkok then. This weekend I'll head up to Chiangmai for a few days with a coworker before we head home on Tuesday. So, you can probably expect one more post while I'm here, and one about Chiangmai when I get back to DC.
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