The land of free press and elephant taxis

May 23rd, 2002 at 12:00am

Even though I’ve been to Bangkok many times now as it’s pretty much the’home base’ for travelling in SE Asia, there is still always something new to see or experience here. Last night it was an elephant crossing 6 lanes of traffic in downtown Bangkok with a reflector sticker stuck to it’s tail. It was the reflector sticker actually that made it so damn funny.

So I’m back in Bangkok from Indonesia now…running around and doing all my post-one trip and pre-next trip errands – resupplying toiletries, swapping out old books for new ones, downloading all the pictures from the camera, and hopefully having time to catch a film at Siam Centre or the World Trade Center. Oh yeah, gotta do a software/Playstation 2 run at Pantip Plaza as well, filling in some orders for some folks at home. The later tonight I’m meeting Dad at the airport – yeah! Really excited to see him. His flight gets in pretty late, like 11:30pm, and I told him I’d just meet him at his hotel, but I think I am going to surprise him and meet him at the airport. It’ll be a short stay in Bangkok for him as tomorrow we’re on a 7am flight to Ko Samui, an island on the Gulf side of southern Thailand.

Hey Kathy, do you remember when we crossed the border at Mae Sot into Burma back in October? Mainly because I had never actually WALKED into a different country and I thought it would be cool to go to Burma for the day? Well, it’s a good thing we did it when we did because I was reading in the paper today that Burma closed all of it’s land borders with Thailand yesterday, leaving tourists and Thai merchants stranded on the Burmese side! Man am I so glad that we weren’t there for that. Seems it was a statement against recent artillery fighting between Thailand and Burma. No word yet on when or if they will be re-opened…

Entry Filed under: Bali,Indonesia