Off to the Land Of Smiles

Greetings folks. Here's my first travel blog, and in fact my first blog full stop. Indeed. Aren't you lucky? Perhaps not because I can't think of much to say at the moment. I hope I can edit this later and make it, and therefore me, seem more interesting. Then all I need to do is practice hypnotherapy so I can wipe this pre-edited version from your mind. You are feeling sleepy...

Anyway, brief run down so far: flight was much easier than I expected despite watching two and a half of the crappiest films I've seen in a long time. Don't waste life on Pulse or Adrift unless you're stuck somewhere like a prison cell or a plane. Probably don't watch Garfield either unless you're either a very big fan of Bill Murray who does Garfield's voice, or it improves vastly during the second half that I decided not to watch. The flight was improved greatly by having plenty of space on the way to Dubai since the plane was virtually empty. Had the whole row to myself and a window seat. The most amazing thing through which I saw was Beirut at night. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to get my (Joe's - thanks Broseph) camera out to snap it but if you imagine dozens of roads in a sort of Nile delta type pattern stretching inland along the length of the coast but denoted only by street lights that sort of describes it.

Had just a couple of hours stop in Abu Dhabi. Dubai's a crazy country geographically speaking. Half city, half desert, no, one quarter city, three quarters desert is probably closer to the mark, not that I saw any of it apart from from on the plane and through the airport windows. I did manage to take some photos though. This first one's Abu Dhabi airport:

Much more interesting than Heathrow I thought although as you can tell after just one picture I'm not a photographer so this photo doesn't really do it justice, but you get the idea. The next one isn't for anyone of a nervous disposition since it's me in the waiting lounge at Abu Dhabi feeling quite knackered, hot but satisfied so far.

This is the view out of the airport window (well, one of them, there wasn't just one massive airport window but many in fact. Conservative architecture everywhere these days.) you get a rough idea of the crappy, mostly desert landscape. Not much to look at, but I'm posting it anyway. The plane is the one that flew me from Dubai to Thailand.


The last Dubai picture is from the plane. Unfortunately the photo doesn't do the turquoise sea, ultramarine sky and brilliant sunshine justice. I might photoshop it later, make the sea the proper colour, perhaps add a mountain or two and some giant glass pyramids to spice things up a bit.

So then it was onwards to Thailand. This second half of the flight was greatly improved by this nice Iraqi bloke I was sat next to:


He kept giving me his sweets, the armrest, his pen, patience numerous times when I got up to walk about and was just generally very friendly and cheerful, despite his demeanor in the picture. This was photo attempt number 5 by which time he'd stopped smiling. The most amazing part of this leg of the journey was flying over India. I've never flown over such a massive country, it really makes you appreciate how big it is when you consider it took over two hours at about 600mph. There were many interesting sights (mountains, huge rivers, a giant glass pyramid etc) but I figured by this time I'd probably taken almost enough aerial photos. Just one more on the way there which is of Bangkok from the plane. It was taken at about 20,000ft and illustrates the smog issue more than the city. I kept waiting to drop under the clouds but eventually realised we weren't going to so I snapped it anyway.


My first Thai sunset, hopefully not my last or best.


One of the first things that I noticed as the plane taxied to the terminal was that on the gangways that connect the passenger door to the terminal were pictures of the King of Thailand with "Long live the King" written underneath in place of the usual HSBC/Toyota/Nestle etc advertising. There's loads of pictures of the king everywhere from construction sites to people's houses. I'll get a photo or two at some point probably.

And now, finally we start getting to the good stuff. Since I forgot to take the camera with me today there's only two more to go, a blessing for those of you with short attention spans, if you're still reading. You'll have to take my word for it that I saw a hovering hover car and a polar bear riding a unicycle down Soi 24, Sukhumvit . If they're still there tomorrow when I've got my camera I'll get the evidence for you.

This is some monument, one of many, just by some road near the centre of Bangkok. I saw it on my first night here as I was walking around with Kriangsak and his girlfriend Pook (rhymes with hook.) Side note: Huzzah! I've just seen my first Thai lizard. (Yet again I was too slow with the camera so if you want to see one type "lizard" into images.google.com.) Small, yellowy-beige little thing that just ran past the monitor on the desk. Anyhoo, the piccy:


And lastly, we went to Buddy for a beer on Khao San road, which was where I took this photo:


Right, it's nearly 4am here and this isn't doing my attempt to shift to local time any good. I'll probably post some more stuff up in the next few days while I'm still at Kriangsak's because he's got internet access, but that isn't a promise. We're off into Bangkok again tomorrow for an evening of Thai whiskey drinking, remember that if you find yourself looking for more blog and wish me luck. Night.