Sunday, January 4, 2009

Stop Shopping and Start Packing

Well, things in Thailand seem to be remaining calm. Christmas is over and now our departure date is approaching fast. I just reread my packing list from the Africa blog and this one will be pretty much the same, although probably a bit pared down since the trip is only 2 weeks and this time I will have to lug my pack around on public transit and hotel hunting wander abouts. No one is prebooking our hotel rooms this time. Fortunately, I still have almost everything I need from the last time and Val bought me a couple of essential for Christmas so I don't think I need to buy anything more. I just need to find it all in my house and stuff it in a bag (which I also need to find - Lea says I don't need a new one, although Val bought a new bag at Capital Iron and I had to constrain myself. It didn't help that she found a 5 dollar bill in it with a Christmas sticker stuck to it once she got it home (Secret Santa goes a bit eccentric).

Val and I had a 'trip participant meeting' the other day (ok, we ducked into a Starbucks when it started bucketing rain while we were shopping, but we did discuss the trip). We came up with a rough outline of what we want to do where. Remember this is 'rough'. We land in Bangkok on Feb 15 at 11:30 pm. After two full days of travel we decided to book ourselves into a fancy hotel so that first night is taken care of. Then we are on our own. Things we hope to do in Bangkok are sightsee, go to the market, river tour, day trip to a nearby park for hiking and birding. Then we want to take the night train to Chang Mai up north. There we want to take a cooking class, visit an elephant sanctuary, visit the night market and sightsee. Then a quick flight to the south, some nice beachy area where we can recouperate and shop some more, find shore birds etc, low key stuff, take a boat tour of some of the islands and beaches, snorkel... Then back to Bangkok for our flight home on Feb 28.

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