Off to a Great Start
"One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble"
Tim Rice - Chess
The culmination of travel in 2023 for Roadboy is my long awaited return to Asia.
Four decades ago I made my first trip to Asia. The trip was limited to Japan and Hong Kong. At that time Japan was in its full glory as the globe's ascendant economic and manufacturing powerhouse.
Similarly, Hong Kong was under its last vestiges of British control. It was stunning. We traipsed through a myriad of designer factories, ogled the stunning new Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Building, visited Hong Kong Disney, and the (now scraped) Tiger Balm Gardens.
It was a truly magic time in my life; anything seemed possible. The whole world awaited me.
In the decades to follow, there would be subsequent trips to Japan and Singapore. But never any journeys to Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand and Vietnam.
But here I must wind the clock back to 1980 and my first architectural job (in Seattle). At that firm (WGHT) there was a special colleague named Boonsong. Mr. Boon was a talented, hard working Thai architect (and a damned great human being). He was working in Seattle on a temporary basis to earn enough money to fund his son's education at the University of Washington. His migration and employment in Seattle was his only option as Thailand prohibited citizens from taking money out of the country.
At home he was a renowned campus architect for a major University and he regaled me with his stories of his beloved homeland. the result was a desire to visit Thailand someday.
So this trip begin with a short visit to Bangkok.
Our trip itinerary began with a flight from Phoenix to LAX. Then we took a (very) long flight to Tokyo's (very nice) new Haneda Airport arriving at 4:45 am in the morning. Haneda at that hour turned out to be an eerie place. You get off a flight and walk through this immense airport with seemingly no one else there.
Haneda at 4:45 AM
At Haneda we had a six hour layover before connecting to our JAL flight for the final leg to Bangkok.
Then just before our flight to Bangkok the flight crew arrived at the gate. I admit being touched when they lined up smartly, turned to face the departure lounge and bowed in reverence to the passengers they would serve. It was a simple, yet deeply meaningful, gesture of respect.
The JAL flight was as smooth as the bow and but when we arrived into Bangkok we were even more tired and more dazed. All we wanted to do was shower and sleep.
But at Suvarnabhumi airport our stupor was simply compounded by the mass of traveling humanity present at 4:00 pm on the Friday before a three-day weekend. The holiday meant that traffic into Bangkok was even more choked than usual. In fact, Klass our AirBNB host suggested we find a place to eat in the airport and wait about 4 hours before trying to make our way into the city.
We headed his advice and eventually caught a Grab to our AirBNB. Grab is to Southeast Asia what Uber is to the US. In fact, Grab bought out Uber's Asian operations.
Once in our AirBNB, it was finally time to shower and sleep.
Tomorrow we could start to figure out some trip logistics.
Roadboy's Travels © 2023
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