Thailand: getting there
Surprisingly, we got to Thailand without much drama. Riccardo graciously volunteered to drive us to Narita airport Saturday afternoon, and Tressa and I were more than happy to accept. We timed things perfectly. At Narita we had just enough time for some dinner, and otherwise there was no waiting around.
Indeed, I would be happy to travel with a "tour" more often; it allowed quick-and-easy check-in and a hassle-free BKK airport-to-hotel transfer. Additionally, considering we booked a hotel in Bangkok only because airfare was significantly cheaper in a package tour than by itself (thus, hotel was a "free" perk), the accommodations we ended up with for our first two nights in
Thailand were more posh than we expected. Even better, we were on the ninth floor which was excellent for snapping some aerial pictures of Bangkok.Though the Tongtara Riverview Hotel is a ways from downtown Bangkok, travel in the city is cheap and we didn't have any problems with traffic. Despite needing a bit of refreshing, our room was comfortable and clean, and bigger than many others I've stayed in. The hotel itself was great: a couple re
staurants, a bar, a terrific gym and 5th-floor outdoor pool...We arrived at the hotel around 1:30am on Saturday night. Thankfully one of the restaurants was 24-hour so we caught a quick bite before bed. At the restaurant we attempted to figure out the conversion between Yen and Baht... needless to say, after a day of travel (including a 7-hour flight) our math left something to be desired. We figured it out eventually (actually the Yen is quite close to
the Canadian Dollar; 
both $1 and 100Y are worth approximately 30B).Geckos, like this little guy who was about an inch in length, were EVERYWHERE in Thailand. I am quite thankful that we were infrequently surprised by these little cuties and not the infamous cockroaches we were warned of (none seen,
actually).Point of interest from transit experience: we were shuttled from BKK in a large van/mini-bus. At some point during this trip we noticed a paddy-wagon driving along-side us on the expressway. The paddy-wagon was full of people: women, men, etc. Weird. Weirder was that when the officers in the cab realized there were foreign girls in our van they proceeded to oogle and cat-call and such nonsense. How professional!
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