We survived the longest plane flight ever!! It really was not as bad as I expected it to be, but it definitely was LONG. We got to the airport and despite what OAT guy told us, the ticket counter did not open til 4:30 so we met Megan and Eleanore, arriving at the same time! We had fun visiting and were the first in line which was good as security was busy by the time we got our boarding passes. We made it and got onboard the first flight. whew. Then we did fine to Minneapolis and found our new gate and got on the San Francisco flight. When we arrived there, we had to go back through security and had to change terminals (actually, those were in reverse order) and we got to our gate and on the plane. By this time, we were all ready to sleep. Megan and I did pretty well in that department. I think Jim and Eleanore slept some but not as much as the two M's did. I slept so well that I even slept through the ice cream sandwiches they passed out-shoot, that was the best food we got! lol. We arrived safely in Tokyo and found out that it was basically a change in planes again as we had to take everything and get off and go through security and go to another gate and get back on the plane. We had a couple of hours which was really nice about that time. Then we had another 6 hour leg before arriving at about midnight in Bangkok. Our Trip Leader, Ya, met us and we have a very nice bus. It holds the 16 of us with everyone being able to have a separate seat if we wish. There is also much more leg room than in a normal bus. So we are very happy campers at this point. Our hotel is really nice and about a block from the night market which we walked down to tonight. We did not do any damage to the wallet but we had fun looking.
Our day was just so much fun though. We started with a meeting to get to know each other and to outline the program for the 2 weeks. Then we left for our tour today on the bus. Ya is great about giving us all kinds of information about the history, lives of the people, the way life is lived here. It was so very interesting and he took us on a tour that really gave us a great understanding of the Thai life here. We started off by going to the beautiful flower market which is just huge and had such gorgeous flowers. There are tons of orchids as well as other flowers and also roses of all colors. Ya bought each of us a neat little bracelet of flowers and we all oohed and aahed all through the market. Then we got on a long tail boat and spent the rest of the day almost from there. The boat was so neat and very low in the water. Hopefully some of our photos will let you see what it is like. We rode through the canals of Bangkok and saw houses and all sorts of things. There were children swimming in the water as school is not in session this week. We saw all kinds of temples and we rode until we finally came to the house of a wonderful Thai family that had us to their home. The wife did a great Thai cooking lesson. This is not going to be an easy trip for me food wise because almost everything has garlic, shallots or chives in it. And I am not fond of curry and that is the other thing they use. But the lady was great to show us how to do the cooking and to explain how they did it all. The house and yard was wonderful-right on the water and the backyard was a marshy water area that had all sorts of flowers and birds. We had lunch there after the cooking demonstration. Then we got back in the boat and rode some more.
We stopped at one of the temples that I will have tell you the name of next time-something like Temple of Dawn or something, but tonight I am too tired to think. It was fabulous and we walked to the top, which was no SMALL feat! Let me tell you, the Great Wall of China steps were not as steep as this! Eleanore got a couple of great shots of Jim, Megan and me coming down. I truly thought I was going to have to sit down and slide down but I was able to make it on my feet! Yea! It was beautiful and the photos don't do it justice -it was incredible.
I am going to stop right now and post this and do a second post so I don't lose this.
No comments:
Post a Comment