The Long Flight to Thailand

The plane ride to Thailand was 22 hours long, but it wasn't as boring as it could have been. On the first flight, which was 13 and a half hours long, there were screens in front of the seats that were remote control. You could watch movies and play games on them. I played a couple of games and watched Madagascar 3.  I also read a little. Here is a picture that someone took of me:

At some point Daddy and I played multi-player games against each other. He was Zeus and I was Athena.

We stopped in Japan before getting on ANOTHER long flight that was about 7 hours long to Bangkok.

When we FINALLY got to Bangkok, it was only a little past midnight Bangkok time!  There was a Christmas tree made of lights at the airport. Here is a picture of it that I took:

We got a shuttle ride to our hotel and fell asleep pretty quickly.

The Cruller Stand

This is my first post about Thailand:

On 12/23/12 and 12/25/12 we went to a cruller stand in Chiang Mai. Mommy found out about it on the Internet and blogged about it.  I wanted to show you some more pictures.

A cruller is like a Chinese donut. The people who made the crullers made animal shapes. The first time, I got an elephant shaped one. Here is a picture of it:

Here is a picture of the stand:

The second time I got a crocodile:

Then Daddy and I went to watch them make crullers. The man making them saw us and offered to make me an Angry Bird. Here is a picture of it:

Those crullers weren't as sweet as donuts in the US, but they do taste good!

"Hey, you wanna go to Thailand for Christmas?"

I asked Mama Geek that question one night in April 2012. I had been idly surfing flyertalk.com and came across a thread on cheap tickets over the Christmas break, which led, through a process which is too boring to detail here, to me hunting for the most distant destination we could go using my frequent flyer miles. Bangkok popped up in the candidates, and since we've been wanting for some time to visit Thailand -- and warm sounded good for winter -- I asked my question.

Mama Geek looked startled, then pensive.  We checked the school calendar, I mulled over my work schedule, and it seemed possible. When the idea still seemed good the next morning, clicky clicky and we had three tickets to Thailand with almost no ideas beyond that.  We did slow research, polled some friends who've spent a lot of time in Thailand, realized we could pick at most two destinations, and boiled it down to two options: (a) Bangkok and Chiang Mai or (b) Bangkok and a beach.  In the end, Geek Girl voted for Chiang Mai -- "we can go to the beach closer to here, Daddy" -- and we decided, why not?

Once we worked that out, we were able to arrange internal travel and hotels.  The short version is:

• IAD-NRT-BKK-NRT-SFO-IAD on United; 27 hours on the outbound and 30 on the return.  Thankfully, we were in business class the whole way -- frequent flyer miles are a good thing.
• BKK-CNX-BKK on Thai Airways.  It's only a one-hour flight, but Thai still manages a snack and two drink services.
• The first night, we stayed at the Vismaya Suvarnabhumi, about 10 minutes from BKK.  This was the most expensive ($88/night) but worth it because it was so close, had a free airport shuttle both ways, had free breakfast, and good rooms.  
• While in Chiang Mai, we stayed at the Galare Guest House, where $33/night got us a room with a king-sized bed and a twin bed, shower/toilet/sink, and plenty of storage space.  The Galare is east of the Old City of Chiang Mai, on a quiet side street (soi) right along the river.  We were happy, though we might choose to stay more centrally next time.
• We stayed at the Holiday Inn Bangkok Silom (I know, how original) during our last five days.  We got a $70/night rate for two double beds (American-sized doubles) plus free Internet and free breakfast.  Silom has lots of food choices on the small sois near the hotel, good connections with river ferries and the BTS, and was just a bit calmer than some of the other areas of the city we visited.

Since we've been back, folks have asked what my favorite part of the trip was, and it's really hard to pick only one.  Instead, here are some highlights, in no particular order:

One word: food.  Mama Geek has already posted a bit on this.  I was a fan of Thai food long before our trip, but this cemented it.  Meatballs on a stick, grilled fresh in front of you, with a delicious spicy chile sauce, for $1?  Yes, please.  Spicy papaya salad for $2?  Yes, please.  Fresh tropical fruits -- mangos and mangosteens, dragonfruit, lychee and longan -- everywhere you look?  Yes, please.  Chinese donuts and Thai coffee consumed while sitting on plastic stools at an outside stall in a market street?  Yes, please.  Rice with pork, veggies, and chiles -- really spicy chiles -- for $3 if it's fancy?  Oh, hell, yes.  Pardon me while I salivate at the memories.

An unexpected bonus: running the 10-km race associated with the 2012 Chiang Mai Marathon.  I had known the marathon would happen near Christmas, having read about it on the A Little Adrift blog, but didn't know it would happen while we were there.  We had just arrived at the Tha Phae Gate in the old town

Mama Geek and Geek Girl at Tha Phae Gate, Chiang Mai

when I saw the registration and packet pickup desks, and started making moon eyes at Mama Geek.  "Can I?  I was going to run that far tomorrow anyway..."  She sighed and agreed (I think mostly so I would shut up and we could go get something cool to drink), and 400 baht and an exchange of English, Thai, and gesticulation later, I was signed up.  My physical souvenir from Thailand is a 10K finisher's medal and a new lightweight mesh T-shirt -- great for those hot, sticky runs here in the summer.

My souvenirs from Thailand

There are 7-11 stores everywhere.  According to their corporate Web site, there are 8,030 7-11 stores in the U.S. and Canada; according to one of our guidebooks, there are over 2,700 7-11 stores in Bangkok alone.  I believe it: we counted no fewer than six 7-11 stores within 15 minutes' walk from our hotel in Bangkok.  The ubiquity is a good thing: all of them sell a 600 milliliter bottle of water for 6 baht (20 cents) and ice cream cone for 21 baht -- a very nice treat in such a warm place.  

I was awed by the beauty of the wats we visited.  All of them were heavily touristed, especially Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai and Wat Phra Kaew and Wat Pho in Bangkok, but despite that every one of them had jaw-dropping moments for me.  We made sure to spend some time sitting quietly in each temple we visited, which was remarkably calming, and Geek Girl and I received blessings from monks at three temples.  Here are just a few pictures -- Mama Geek can verify I took literally hundreds more.

Wat Phra Singh, Chiang Mai

Mama Geek and Geek Girl with nagas at Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai

Chedi (also called a stupa) at Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep

Guardian giant (Yaksha) at Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok 

At Wat Pho, the monk who gave us a blessing startled me by speaking perfect English to us -- it turns out he spends half of each year in Boston!  Another unexpected bit: Geek Girl was interviewed by students learning English

Geek Girl and her interviewers, Wat Phra Singh, Chiang Mai

which brought back memories of a visit to Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, where the same thing happened to me.  

We also got a bonus on the way home -- my mom and dad were able to meet us at SFO for a quick visit.  They hadn't seen Geek Girl or Mama Geek in person in a year, so it was fun for all of us.

Our day outside Chiang Mai with elephant rides and zip-lining (Mama Geek, too!) is also definitely a highlight, but I think Geek Girl wants to write a post about that, so I won't spoil it for her.  And Geek Girl should be the one to tell you about her culinary highlight.  Be on the lookout for her post when she has it done.

Thailand Thoughts and Pictures

Hopefully one of us will blog more extensively about our trip to Thailand.  In case we don't, I wanted to jot down my impressions and highlights before they fade and post a few photos.

1.  Traffic!  Traffic drives on the left side of the road.  Between having to look the opposite way and dodging motorbikes, it was an adventure just to cross the street.  We took two taxi rides during rush hour that took a long long time.

2.  Oranges.  You remember Tang, the orange-flavored drink?  I was positive when I ordered an orange juice that they had used Tang instead of real oranges.  But there was pulp and all of the subsequent orange juices tasted the same.  Thai oranges taste like Tang!

3.  Apparently I look Thai.  At least in Chiang Mai, I was asked several times if I was Thai.

My highlights for the trip:  Thai massages (we all got massages in Chiang Mai and then Daddy Geek and I each got one more in Bangkok), elephant rides and zip-lining, temples, and the food!

Some pictures from the trip.  You might notice they tend to be food-oriented...

This was our first lunch in Chiang Mai:

We were looking for lunch before going to a temple.  The guidebook had mentioned a roadside stand, but we couldn't find it.  We kept walking and saw a lean-to with a kitchen and seating.  We walked over and found an empty table and everyone looked at us...  Daddy Geek went over to the cook, and with the help of a passerby with some English and lots of repetition (one pork and veggies no spicy, two pork and veggies, spicy) we ordered lunch.  Here's the cook at work:

Note: lunch was about $2.30.

My only culinary goal for the trip (Daddy Geek and Geek Girl had a separate goal that they'll tell you about later) was to find the "Chinese donut" place mentioned in an Eating Asia post.  On Saturday we had wandered through the market and couldn't find the place.  However, on Sunday morning, after Daddy Geek ran the 10K part of the Chiang Mai Marathon, he found the place (it had closed up shop by the time we had gone by on Saturday).

Here's a dinosaur donut and "chromosome" donuts:

And after pointing at the sign above displaying the shapes and prices, Geek Girl ordered an elephant:

On our first day in Bangkok, we took a boat ride up to the Grand Palace complex.  Here's Geek Girl hot and tired while we get our bearings:

We had hoped to visit a couple of additional temples that day, but it was just too hot so we took a taxi home.  Somehow after the large hotel buffet breakfast (contained American, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, British, and European items) we skipped lunch.  Well, Geek Girl had an ice cream and we all had cold drinks.  On our way back to the hotel, we grabbed some fried chicken balls from a stand.  Here they are after being fried and then covered with a yummy chile-vinegar sauce:

A couple days later we woke up earlier to take the river boat again, this time to Wat Pho.  This is the temple that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton visited in November 2012.  Wat Pho is home of Thailand's biggest reclining Buddha statue.  It was truly amazing.

Here's a picture of the head:

And the view from the foot:

And the three of us outside with chedi (mound-like structures containing relics):

We have many more photos (and videos from zip-lining) and hopefully will be sharing the with you soon.

Oh, the places we went in 2012

Nobody who knows me will be surprised to learn that I enjoy reading travel blogs. Recently, many of my favorite travel bloggers have been posting end-of-year summaries, which got me thinking about such an update for our blog. It also helps that we've just returned from a trip to Thailand, and I've been getting lined up to write some posts on that subject as well.

Without further introduction, I give you the 2.5 Geeks 2012 travel summary; tag this one "navel-gazing":

• Jan: no trips
• Feb: no trips
• Mar: Arizona and Colorado (business)
• Apr: Oregon (business)
• May: New Mexico (business)
• Jun: California and Idaho (business), Ohio and Pennsylvania (family)
• Jul: Virginia Beach (family)
• Aug: Shenandoah National Park (family)
• Sep: California and Germany (business)
• Oct: Ohio (family)
• Nov: no trips
• Dec: California (business with a side dish of family) and Thailand (family)

In all, I had nine business trips, 25 flights, 44,000 miles, and too many redeyes. Oddly enough, Mama Geek and Geek Girl had no flights at all until December, when we flew 20,000 miles for our trip to Thailand. That trip included our longest single segment ever - 13 hours, 41 minutes from IAD to NRT.

Travel Geek that I am, I can't resist keeping some lists, including one of all the airports I've flown into or out of over the years. I got to add four new ones this year - Bangkok Suvarnabhumi and Chiang Mai, Thailand (BKK and CNX); Bremen, Germany (BRE); and Narita, Tokyo, Japan (NRT), so the full list now looks like:

ABQ ACA AEY AMS ANI ANC AUS BET BKK* BOI BOS BRE BRU BSL BUR BWI CAN CBR CDG CLT CKG CMH COS CPH CNX* CTA DCA DEN DFW EDI FCO FLL FRA GDL HKG HNL IAD IAH ITO KOA JAX JFK KEF KWL LAS LAX LGW LHR LIN MAA MEX MUC MSP MXP MYU NRT* OAK ORD ONT PDX PEK PHL PHX PMO REY RNO SAN SAT SEA SFO SHA SIN SJC SLC SMF SNA SYD TPE TXL WUH XIY YYJ YUL ZIH ZRH (*most recent additions)

We also have lists of all the countries we have each visited, where our definition of "visited" requires that we at least leave the airport/train station/bus station/whatever and walk around a while. Depending on how you count Puerto Rico, Thailand was my 19th or 20th country:

• Daddy Geek: 19 or 20 (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vatican City, plus the US territory of Puerto Rico). If you count airport transfers, add in Denmark, Japan, and Taiwan.


• Mama Geek: 12 or 13 (Austria, Canada, China, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vatican City, plus Puerto Rico). If you count airport transfers, add in Germany and Japan.


• Geek Girl: 6 or 7 (France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, and Vatican City, plus Puerto Rico).  If you count airport transfers, add in Germany and Japan.

We also have a list of our geographic extremes - the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost, and westernmost spots we have been on the ground:

• Daddy Geek:
• N: NE of Húsavik, Iceland (66.20N, 17.05W)
• S: Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, ACT, Australia (35.47S, 148.90E)
• E: Sydney, Australia (33.86S, 151.22E)
• W: 10 km W of Mekoryuk, Alaska (60.34N, 166.39W)


• Mama Geek:
• N: Inverness, Scotland (57.48N, 4.22W)
• S: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• E: Shanghai, China (31.24N, 121.49E)
• W: Hale'iwa, Hawaii (21.59N, 158.12W)


• Geek Girl:
• N: Frankfurt Airport, Germany (50.05N, 8.57E)
• S: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• E: Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (13.69N, 100.75E)
• W: Kona Airport, Hawaii (19.74N, 156.04W)

I'm still the only Geek who has traveled south of the Equator, and none of us has yet visited Africa, Antarctica, or South America. Clearly we need to fix all these deficiencies soon. Should I tell Mama Geek that Geek Girl and I have already been discussing our next destination?

[Note: edited by Daddy Geek on 3 Jan 2013, 0711 EST, because Mama Geek reminded me she has also visited Taiwan.]