This is a very long site. It is strongly recommended that you have a sandwich and a coke by your chair, and remember what you mother told you about going to the bathroom before you leave home.

Now grab your sandals and sun hat and visit Amazing Thailand with us. Do try all the clicking links... After all, Gypsy went to a lot of work to make this page fun for you, so get with it! There are lots of photos so please be patient with slow loading pages. Let's start by clicking on the Thai flag and listening to the National Anthem of Thailand!

As soon as we close front door behind us, we are on vacation.. and getting there can be a lot of fun.... or maybe not.

We left home about 5:30 am and it was nasty and rainy, so we had to put all the luggage in the back of the truck cab where I shared my little jump-seat space with all the other bags. That was great practice for sitting in economy airline seats.

We were so looking forward to a cup of that wonderful, fresh, free coffee they have at the bus station. We arrived...Gypsy ran to the rest room... Cuz ran to the ticket counter... and Gypsy's spouse, The Gypsy King, parked the truck. When I came out of the restroom, Cuz had the bus tickets, The Gypsy King was just coming in the front door, and the bus was already loading... so it was a very quick and fairly painless... and coffee-less... goodbye at Portland!

On the bus they had a movie... the first of many we were to see this day... but I don't even remember what it was. I am sure I would remember if only I had that big cup of coffee. In Boston, check-in went smoothly and by noonish we were airborne. Lunch and a movie.

Detroit and a new plane... dinner and a movie, and another movie, and another movie, a snack, and another movie, and then breakfast.  

The only mishap I had was that I could not figger out how to get into the restroom, as usual... Poor Gypsy has this problem all the time in planes. Fortunately, Cuz was on the ball and showed me how to get in... otherwise, this could have been an emergency landing situation.

A little Japanese toddler tried to take off Cuz's shoes while she feigned sleep. I guess she wasn't really asleep because the flight attendant had rammed a food cart into her earlier.  That probably woke her up. Our seats for this part of the flight were at the bulkhead right by the galley and the rest room... so it was high traffic all during the flight. But lots of leg room if you kept your eyes on your shoes.

Tokyo. Here we were able to get off the plane and walk around a terminal so crowded that you had to slip through the people sideways. We got to use a real rest room.... they had two western toilets... the rest were "Asian." Also while we waited for our flight to Bangkok to load... we covertly checked out some of our tour mates by their luggage tags. Looks like it will be an interesting two weeks. folks!

Since we just had breakfast before we landed... after we boarded again, we were treated to dinner.   (It was about 7pm Tokyo time). And for the rest of the six-hour flight to Bangkok, we were shown a couple of the same movies we were subjected to on the previous flight. Gypsy never uses earphones, she just makes up dialog in her head to go along with the pictures. At least that way the plot changes a little each time.

We arrived in Bangkok about midnight local time. Twelve hour difference... so it was noon by our body clocks.  Turning noon into midnight and back again on our return was no small trick.

We were met by our tour guide and our little group was taken to the hotel, where we were already checked in, The Monarch Lee Gardens.   Of course, now it was almost 2 am... and we found our room key card didn't work. I went to the lobby and try to find help... lotsa luck!. A clerk hidden in some deep back recess of the offices finally must have heard my cries echoing around the lobby.   He couldn't make the key work either... neither could the bellman.. who by this time had arrived with the luggage. Finally the clerk whisked away the offending key card and returned shortly with a new one. Into our room at last.   It was now about 2:30 am.

We love our room.... but are too tired to enjoy it much. Luxurious glass and mirrored bathroom... glass wall 18th floor panorama of downtown Bangkok...   We each enjoyed a quick shower and popped into our comfy beds and..... Zzzzzz....zz...z....