Thailand

Capital: Bangkok

Currency: Baht ($1 = around 35 Baht)

Language: Thai

Side of the Road: Left

1/9

We landed in Thailand at about 1 or 2 in the morning with our hostel already booked. We grabbed a cab from the airport and rode the expressway into Bangkok. We saw maybe one other car the entire time. When we got to the guest house, we had to sort out a small booking mix-up, which was made much easier by the fact that they spoke English. Thai is actually pretty easy on the ears, but not any easier to learn than Chinese. They, too, use a different alphabet. The currency definitely required some mental math on my part, but I was only in the country for about 12 hours, so I wasn't really looking to stretch my Baht.

The room had the bare essentials--two beds and a bathroom down the hall. It turned out to be a good value...I think. We got a few hours of sleep before waking up to check out. It was hot outside that day, and traffic was bad, and nothing looked remotely like winter. I went to the 7-11, which was weird, and then we went back to the airport, which was also weird. This was the same airport that had been besieged by protesters just a few weeks before. It was kind of disappointing to see that operations had returned to normal, that there weren't hordes of people with unintelligible signs hurling unintelligible insults at whatever government happened to be in power that day, but in retrospect, it was probably better that the airport wasn't shut down.

You know what happens from here, more checkpoints, passport stamps, and shoving to get on the plane. (Another flight on Air Asia.) I support my previous statement by saying that this flight had mostly Chinese passengers. I grabbed a sandwich and a fistful of US dollars on the way, which I will explain later, and headed off to Cambodia. I would've liked to stay longer--I hear the country has great beaches--but we had other plans. I promise that I did far more interesting things in Cambodia than I did in Thailand. You'll just have to keep reading.