Thailand: Day 1: The Crossing

Today we fly to Thailand. Our friend Nicole picks us up at 4:30 in the morning and we go to the airport in Sacramento. We check ourselves in and go through security. We get something to eat and board our plane to LAX.

One and a half hours to LAX. A four hour layover. Eleven hours to Tokyo, Japan. A three hour layover. Seven hours to Bangkok. We arrive at eleven PM. This is over 26 hours of travel. This was not all that bad, only because I had my newly purchased PSP. I gamed most of the time. Mostly I played Final Fantasy Tactics, allowing me to be absorbed in that and not in the sitting... and sitting...

We arrive in Bangkok, deplane and go through a short line at customs. We have no checked bags, and head to find a taxi. I had read an article provided to me by my friend Lance, at work, who also went to Thailand on the same day as us. It said that the public taxis were hard to find because they are in competition with the airport "limosine" service. We first went to the airport taxi desk, not knowing any better, but wondering why there wasn't a single other person around. When we got quoted a price of 850 baht for the ride, we declined and chose to explore further. Just past this desk was a long line in front of a sign leading outside the airport labled "Public Taxi". Now we are in business. We get a friendly female driver who takes us to our only booked hotel of the trip, about 25 minutes from the airport. The freeways are empty at midnight, but the surface streets are still somewhat busy. We check in and go to our room.

The room, and the hallway leading to it, are slightly prison-esque. There is tile everything, as I am told by Lucy that carpet doesn't fair well in muggy climates. The room is bare and the pictures on the wall still have the generic target style picture in the frame with the barcode on them. I take a shower and go to bed. I cannot sleep, from the time change, even though I slept only maybe 2 hours the entire flight over. I doze here and there but it was a miserable night.