Day 1 & 2 - Travelling to Thailand

Early on Saturday morning, Alison and I left for Thailand. Getting there required a series of long flights. It is ~21 hours of flight time to arrive in Bangkok. We arrive late Sunday night. We prioritized visiting Thailand because one of Alison's best friends, Victoria, teaches at an international school in Bangkok. We are very excited for this trip. As we get underway I have a few thoughts:

1. As this trip to Thailand approached many people have asked us if we were nervous about the Coronavirus. Some people even asked if we planned to cancel our trip. The short answer is no, we aren't particularly nervous and we never considered cancelling our trip. While the Coronavirus is serious and we will take sensible precautions, such as washing our hands often, and using hand sanitizer the risk is limited. Currently there are ~25 confirmed cases in Thailand. That number has held steady for a few days leading up to our trip. We have monitored the situation as best we can and have tried to match our level of concern to the level of risk. With the high volume of information related to the Coronavirus it is easy to inflate the level of concern. As the virus spread we spoke to Victoria, who lives in Bangkok and got first hand information about conditions within Thailand. While people there are also taking precautions, she did not have a high level of concern. I guess what I am trying to say is that while there are many reasons to be concerned when traveling internationally, fear can quickly escalate and become irrational. Be reasonable, take precautions, assess the situation, but don't let fear prevent you from embracing the experience. 

2. I read a few books in preparation for this trip:

Private Dancer by Stephen Leather

The Beach by Alex Garland

Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon

First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

First They Killed My Father had the biggest impact on me. It is one of the saddest, most heart-wrenching books I have ever read. The story takes place in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge assumed power in Cambodia. During their four-year reign of terror and genocide nearly 2 million Cambodians died. The author Loung Ung was 5-years old in 1975. She details the terrible things she experienced. Here are a few of her words:

“This is what the war has done to me. Now I want to destroy because of it. There is such hate and rage inside me now. The Angkar has taught me to hate so deeply that I now know I have the power to destroy and kill."

“[The Khmer Rogue soldier] screams a loud, shrill cry, that piercing my heart like a stake, and I imagine that this, maybe, is how Pa died. The soldier's head hangs, bobbing up and down like a chicken's... The woman raises her hammer again. I almost feel pity for him. But it is too late to let him go, it is too late to go back. It is too late for my parents and my country.”

The story of her experiences broke my heart. As I read this book I just kept thinking about how, when these events occurred, Loung was around the same age as my niece, Skylee. I cannot imagine a girl that young and innocent experiencing such horrific events. The level of human suffering that occurred is unimaginable. War is so ugly and terrible and cruel. As I listened to Loung's words, I thought a lot about how this could happen. Really at the root of the ugliness was hate. Hate powered these atrocities that took the lives of millions of human beings. My resolve after reading this book is to forgive, love,  accept, understand, listen and serve more. I will do my part to create a world free of hate. 

3. The flights to and from Thailand will be some of the most comfortable international flights we have flown on. We were upgraded to Delta One both ways. This means we will have seats that will lay flat, and the food might be a little better. The best part is we didn't have to pay any additional money for these seats. That is not to say the upgrade was free. We were upgraded because Alison travels a significant amount of time for work. It is a sacrifice. This is one of the perks of her sacrifice and we are both grateful we get to enjoy a premium experience. This is one of many factors that makes our time apart more bearable. 

The Delta one seats were awesome. After we settled in I stood up and asked Alison what she thought. She told me we are never flying economy again. If only that were true. Delta One is luxurious. The seats are roomy and there is plenty of space to relax. The flight attendant was exceptional and treated us like VIPs. The food was also pretty good - especially considering it was airplane food. There was also lots of food. After we watched a couple of movies we closed the doors to our suites, laid the seat out flat, adjusted our pillows and comforter and went to sleep for a few hours. I could get used to traveling like that.

Despite the awesome Delta One experience we had a fairly stressful travel day. We had tight connections in Seattle and South Korea. It was just our luck that we had delays in both of our first two flights. In SLC we had two mechanical delays, fortunately they were brief and the pilot was able to make up time in the air. If we would have missed our flight to South Korea that would have put us back an entire day. We made that flight fine, but they had catered the wrong aircraft so it ended up being delayed while they moved the food to the correct aircraft. The delay shaved a few minutes off of our already tight connection. We weren’t as worried about if we could make this flight - we were more concerned about our bags. When we got off the flight in South Korea there was an employee waiting for people with connections to Bangkok. They had us assemble in a group and crossed our names off of a listing. When everyone on our connection was assembled the employee escorted us to our next gate. He told us it was a long way to our gate and asked the group if we would be willing to run. We mostly fast walked to the next gate. We had to go through security in South Korea again, which is always a little annoying in these types of situations. They also took our temperature as a measure to try to detect possible cases of the Coronavirus. We made it to our gate with time to spare. Since there were still people in line waiting to board Alison and I peeled off from our group and stopped at the restroom. A minute later the employee rushed into the restroom to find me. He wanted to ensure we made it. I assured him we were fine. We boarded our flight. This one was a little over 6-hours in the air.

We landed in Bangkok a little after 9pm on Sunday. Immigration was easy and fast. Our bags did make our flight and they were waiting for us at baggage claim. We got a taxi to our hotel. Our taxi driver didn’t really speak English, but he tried to talk to us the entire drive (it was around 45 minutes to our hotel). Alison understood nothing he said and I think I maybe got around 5%. As we drove we both marveled a bit at the size of Bangkok. It is a much bigger city than we imagined. It reminds us of many of the other Asian cities we have visited. The size and much of the architecture/design share similarities.

We made it to our hotel and headed right to bed. We prefer arriving in an international location at night so we can get right to bed and try to limit the impact of jet lag on our trip. We are exited to explore Bangkok tomorrow.