Here and Relatively Intact!

B and I arrived to Bangkok safely late last night.

We first took a pleasant flight out of San Diego in the afternoon of the 14th to Seattle, and then we had a 12-hour Korean Air flight to Seoul.  Korean Air blew me away in terms of providing great in-fight entertainment (I watched several documentaries including a special feature about a physicist [and Trekkie] purposing how we might actually be able to create a real holodeck in the near future), genuinely friendly staff, overall cleanliness, and seating comfort.

Their airline blankets were also really soft and a nice shade of purple, so we nicked ours for later use.  In my family it is almost tradition to take the free-ish swag from flights.  Neither of us managed to get any real sleep on this flight, but we were so shagged from this point onwards that we slept about 85% of our next 6-hour leg to Bangkok.  I remember being handed a tray of food and not really wanting it, but not being able to properly convey these feelings as I could barely pull myself out of sleep.

By the time we actually got to Bangkok I was feeling halfway rested.  On our way to immigration it struck me that stealing airline blankets might actually cast a shameful shadow on your character in Thailand, so we found a group of Korean Air attendants on their way to their next flight and hurriedly handed them our wad of stolen contraband... much to their immediate confusion and then acquiescence.

We acquired some Baht and then passed through immigration and got our bags with no problems.  On our way to the public taxi area right outside the airport, we were stopped by a man claiming to be a taxi driver.  He took a look at our directions to the hostel and started pushing our cart of bags towards an elevator in the opposite direction.  We tried to ask with him where his car was parked and why we were not headed towards the area where all of the other taxis are but communication was limited.  We grabbed our cart and got a cost estimate of the ride - he wanted to charge us 1600 Baht when we were told that anything over 350 would be a scam.  Without any hesitation we dismissed him and pushed our luggage in the proper direction.  As we walked away we heard him shout out offers of 500, and then 400 for the ride, which went ignored.  Glad we had the wherewithal to avoid (if a bit narrowly) that one.

The real public taxi service outside gave official receipts and had an actual kiosk where you would line up for the service.  Our ride took about 30 minutes and although we saw large puddles on the roads and sand bags in piles on the street we saw no real flooded areas.

By the time we got to our hostel it was 3am.  There was no attendant at the front desk to check us in and the doors were locked.  Luckily a fellow hosteler was up late and she let us in the front door with her key card.  The taxi left and we resigned to wait the remaining four hours in the lobby until the front desk opened at 7am.  We met a couple English girls who were still awake and discovered that they were also there to teach English.  They offered us a spare bunk in their 4-bunk room to sleep on until morning which was very kind of them and allowed us a few hours of rest.

It's about 830 in the morning here now, we are checked in and have our own bedroom, bathroom, WIFI, and AC!  The sink is small and reminds me of the ones they have in England.  Sugar is already catching up on some sleep, and I am starting to get really hungry.  The air is quite humid but not as hot as I'd imagined.  More updates to come.