We made it to the "Land of Smiles"

Well, it was a little hectic leaving the USA this trip. After putting truck in storage and setting up everything to be gone for ten (10) weeks, saying: "Bye for now." to our Mother, the staff at Flagship Health Care, my Daughter, Tina and our Sister Diane we were tired before the trip.

Our friend, Terry Hamilton, took us to LAX airport at 10:30 at night. Usually we fly out in the afternoon and arrive in Bangkok at one o'clock in the morning. Flying into Bangkok is like flying into the Bronx so at 1:00 AM it was a little scary, at least the first time.

This trip we thought we would change up the plan and arrive in the middle of the afternoon and take a car to the beach holiday town of Pattaya, Thailand. That way we avoid Bangkok completely.

Well, fourteen hours and five minutes to Taipei, Taiwan then three hours to change planes and one hour and twenty minutes to Hong Kong. Now, for a little surprise, we had to get off the plane in Hong Kong, go through security with our carry on bags and get back onto the same plane.

Two hours and twenty minutes later we were in Bangkok airport. We went through immigrations, got our bags and headed to meet our driver in the waiting area.

Here is were I think I screwed up as I got confused with the International Date Line and made arrangements for our pick up on Friday. The trouble was it was Thursday and our driver was not waiting for us.

Daeng made a phone call and thirty minutes later he was at the airport picking us up.

It was an uneventful trip to the Honey Lodge Hotel in Pattaya. Honey Lodge is an old hotel, right in the middle of the adult fun zone, next to the beach and the area know as "Walking Street". Although it is old and a little beat up it has nice folks running the place, fresh water swimming pool, hot water showers in our private bath, clean linen everyday and is really cheap at about $18 USD a night.

We'll after the looonnnnnngggggggg trip and the getting ready for the trip we were beat. We showered and went to sleep.

The next six days are kind of a blur, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, walk, eat, sleep, walk, eat, sleep more and now, at 8:00 AM, maybe we are over jet-lag. We are both up and talking about going to have breakfast at the morning market.

It is great to get my favorite fruit, pineapple, all cut up for only 10 TB a pineapple. That is about thirty-three cents each.

Pattaya is, I think, the second most visited area in Thailand. Everything a person could want can be had here. The beach is nice, although sometimes a little dirty. You can walk out into the warm ocean for hundreds of meters and still be only waist deep in water.

Every kind of food is available here due to the millions of tourists every year. This is the low season so it is not very crowded.

One of the foods I love is the kabob that our friend, "Mr. Kabab" has around the corner from our hotel. He really gets into cutting the meat making his kabobs.

If you would like more information about Pattaya go to Google.com and type "Pattaya".

We are going to spend the next four days here and then are going to fly to Chiang Rai on Sunday. Chiang Rai is the farthest north we can go by plane.

We will have to repack or Asia Airlines will charge us more for our two bags. We are about three kilograms (6.6 pounds) a bag to heavy.

Daeng will arrange for a car to take us the rest of the way to our home in Mae Sai on the Myanmar (Burma) Border.

We plan on spending the next two months working on our new home. We have a few repairs to do as well as get the master bedroom suite done along with a guest room or two.

That way we can have visitors during our spring trip.

For the master bedroom we need to put up one wall with door, have the closet cabinets built and put in the air conditioning system. I'm sure we will want to put in some new light fixtures, bed, furniture and television.

We also have some loose ends with Baan AYO Children's Shelter to work through. We know things will work out okay in the end.

We will write more soon. Until then we'll just let down our hair and have fun!