Bangkok, Thailand

I'm in Thailand! After an uneventful, if rather long, journey from Toronto to Bangkok, Marissa and I arrived here just before midnight on Saturday night.

We left Toronto around 10am on Friday, a short flight to Chicago, then a l-o-n-g 13 hour flight to Tokyo, and a "medium" 7 hour flight to Bangkok. We were fortunate to get bumped up to Business Class on the long flight, and lived in the lap of luxury for the 13 hours. I swear there were more flight attendants than passengers, the food was excellent, in between meals there was a buffet table of fresh fruit and snacks. I was almost expecting a masseuse to be wandering around. But they did have stretching exercises on the video, to ward off the dreaded deep vein thrombosis.

The medium flight seemed longer cause I was stuck beside a rather large guy who half squished into my seat.

I was pretty impressed by the efficiency of the Bangkok airport. We were through immigration in about 5 minutes with a no-charge 30-day tourist visa, and shortly after the conveyor belt started spilling out luggage from our flight. Even the exit from the airport through the inevitable Taxi? throng was pretty tame.

We're staying at the Taewez Guest House, just outside the backpacker-crowd area, 400 baht for a double with airconditioning. It's pretty comfortable here, maybe 30C and a "dry" humidity (it feels humid but not stickly-so).

Today the plan is to relax and see if we're jetlagged. With all the haphazard sleep on the flights, my body has no idea what time it's supposed to be. Tomorrow we take off for the south, to Phuket (ph is a p sound), from there we'll explore some of the islands, dive, try rock climbing, and whatever else suits our fancy...

Toronto, Canada

On all my previous backpacking trips, my two most valuable possessions were my diary, and my exposed film.

This trip, I'll have neither of them.

This blog will replace my diary, and I'll have a digital camera. It'll be a bit strange. I can just see me in the hostels, talking with the kids in my best SNL's Grumpy Old Man voice, back when I was your age, we had diaries! we used pens and paper, and we liked it! ...they probably won't even know who Grumpy Old Man is *sigh*

I leave this Friday, flying in and out of Bangkok, returning on Nov 29. I'm traveling with a friend, Marissa, not to be confused with Marisa, my ex-girlfriend. Marissa & I will be traveling for 2 weeks, and then I'll be on my own for another 2 weeks after that.

The only plans are to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia (I have a ruin-thing, and this is one of the top ruins in the world to see), and Marissa wants to get to a beach in southern Thailand. Other than that there are no plans.

I've posted my email updates from previous trips on this blog, just to make it look like there's content on my blog.

You can reach me by leaving a comment on the blog (just click on the Comments link); or send me an email at eric_dsouza@hotmail.com. I have my Junk Mail filter set on exclusive, so I won't get your email unless you're in my Hotmail Address book.