October 5, 2009

Took the morning off. Rain has started…good and steady through the previous night and most of the morning. That was fine…gave us a chance to have a leisurely breakfast and catch up on some mail. Brian went to the beach and took a dip in the ocean—even with the rain. Back on a plane to Bangkok where we will be for another 4 nights (counting tonight).

The flight was fine. Not a lot happening this day. Brian spent most of the time reading the Thailand Guidebook; Grace slept. Got into Bangkok in the evening. Seems that the hotels aren’t very close to the airport, so it was a long ride to the hotel by bus. Big noisy bus—the driver didn’t seem to understand that the gas pedal could be held in a steady manner. We were laughing and trying to guess why he couldn’t just hold the pedal down with his foot. Grace came up with, “Maybe he worked for a tailor and he is used to pushing on the foot pedal in spurts.” Brian came up with, “Maybe he’s a former elephant mahout and his elephant died (they sit with their feet on the elephant’s ears and use a back and forth motion of the feet to make the beast “giddy-up”).” Seriously, instead of a steady and long vrrrroooooooooooooom, he was going, vrr-vrr-vrrrrrrrr-vrr-vrr-vrrrr-vrrr-vrrrrrrrrv-vrrrrrrrr-vrrr-vrrrr-vrrrrrrr. We chucked the whole way to The Intercontinental Hotel.

BeeYUtiful hotel. We remarked how nice it was and then crashed. Oh, wait—no we had dinner first. Went across the street to the Holiday Inn (it was an associated hotel)—it was late and that was close-by…and open. Had Thai food—but Brian said he was disappointed because it seemed “Americanized” (or, at least, “Anglocized”).