Looks Like We Made It

Folks, we're officially back and ready to share some of the highlights from our trip to Burma and Thailand. We've spent the last few days recovering from jet lag, a malady prior to this trip I believed psychosomatic, ha!

Eddy and I clambered off the plane after traveling for nearly 24 hours — bleary-eyed, disoriented, nostrils tender after long hours of recirculated air — emerging into the balmy, incense-tinged breath of Bangkok. We checked into a reasonably priced guest house on Khao San Road, "backpackers' row", where streets are lined with vendors hawking knickknacks and food stalls preparing some of the best eats. My first bowl of noodles was consumed here, around 2 am the morning we arrived.

The stall was run by a stout, aproned woman with an easy smile. We named her Auntie. Her fabulous soup made my mouth bleed.

Fruit cart filled with ice and watermelon, mango, pineapple, and papaya

Homemade jerky

As we waited for our visas to be processed at the Burmese Embassy, we spent a few days to take in the sites offered by this lively city. We found the best means of negotiating the traffic-congested streets was to avoid them, by utilizing either the water ferry on the Chao Phraya River or the recently constructed Sky Train. Both conveyances were a welcome respite from the damp heat by offering natural and manufactured forms of a cooling breeze.

There are dozens of wats (temples) that litter the city center and to see them we hailed a tuk tuk, a motorized trishaw. These things were my absolute favorite means of transportation. Painted in vivid colors and trimmed in chrome, tuk tuks belie their gaudy appearance with their agility, weaving in and out and through traffic. Drivers take their jobs seriously pushing their zippy, two-stroke engines, coaxing them to forge paths of put-puts and throaty rumbles.

Bangkok parties hard — waking gingerly and staying up late

A shrine erected at the foot of a bodhi tree.

Washing by the khlong

Sunning sausages

Breakfast