Our first 24 hours in Bangkok were interesting! We chose a nice part of town, about 1 mi from City Center, but our particular street is quite a reality check, with cannabis clubs, girly bars with men my age picking up bar girls who are old enough to be their granddaughters… It’s a seedier side of life that I am not that familiar or comfortable with, but that’s okay. Kat does a lot of research before we book, but sometimes the information is wrong, or skewed, and it’s not what we expected. The prices in town are also not as good as Vietnam, and we may have gotten spoiled; some of their breakfasts are double what we’ve been paying.

Today we went to some malls that we were familiar with from our last time here, which was in January 2020. Truthfully, I was not prepared for a city like Bangkok, and at that time I was way out of my element. We had been traveling for less than one year, and the crowds, smog, and chaos definitely did a number on my psyche, and made me want to get the hell out of there. Which is what we did, by bouncing to several different places during the 60 days we were here.

Today was a different story. Yes it was crowded, but it was also overcast with a light drizzle, and temperatures much better than what we have been experiencing, almost cool. We hit some of the pharmacies, and it’s amazing that you can get so many things without a prescription, so we stocked up on some items while we are here.

Which will be for about 72 hours, and then training south to a nice resort just north of Pattaya. It’s a high rise with pools and a gym, and not like a lot of our usual stays.

For me personally, I don’t have enough of a sense of Thailand yet to know if I like it as much as other Asian countries, but it IS quite large, and it seems like the areas to focus on are to the north, ie like Chiang Mai area; the south, like Phuket Island and such, and the central region around Bangkok. And of course we could also head further east and be out of all the big cities totally. So, the bottom line, it is a country worthy of exploration for a long-term stay, especially since they have eased the process of entry.