All posts by Sara

Continent Count = 6

Travel

We made it! Jon and I are in Bangkok, Thailand. We arrived last night a bit after 9 pm local time. This gets us to 6 continents visited. A number likely to remain the same as Antarctica really holds no appeal to me, because… cold.

Most of our avid readers know we’re on an adventure, but just in case you don’t know, here’s the short version. Jon and I quit our jobs (well, I’m technically on a leave of absence which I didn’t even know was an option, woo) and we ended our lease in Melbourne. We have a bit of stuff in storage, our car in a random old lady’s driveway and we’re in Asia for a few weeks, then the US, then Australia, then New Zealand for varying durations with more to come on those trips in the blog. We plan on living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia when all is said and done, because… warm AND sun.

So, back to Thailand. We flew Thai airways here and they lived up to their reputation as a decent airline, serving essentially two dinners both of which were actually not bad. Two random bits about the flight:

  1. An old Italian man smoked a cigarette in the plane bathroom. He didn’t seem to get into trouble, but he also never smoked a second one. Phew.
  2. Thailand advertises itself to people who are on their way to Thailand by way of interrupting all in flight entertainment and playing an endless commercial for the last 15 or so minutes of the flight. I’ll never know what happened on that episode of the Big Bang Theory (except that I’ve already seen it 2 times).

Today we indulged in our hotel’s free breakfast and got advice on how to get to The Grand Palace. We have the subway and sky train figured out for the most part so the first leg went smoothly.

After that we needed to find a ferry. This is where things got a bit dicey. Every other Thai man wanted to help us get where we were going. Unfortunately, they all want you not to go where you are going. Each one told us The Grand Palace wasn’t open and some other nonsense. I’m not entirely sure what their end game is though as they weren’t really trying to get us to do something else instead.

Street View – very Bangkok, old new and everything in between

We had a near miss where we almost paid 100 baht (~$2.95 USD) for a long tail boat, but we managed to figure out that wasn’t quite right and made it to the normal ferry for 15 baht (~$.44 USD). Yeah, yeah, the money wasn’t much, but we didn’t want to be taken for rubes!

See… we’re not rubes!

We made it to The Grand Palace and went to nearby Wat Pho. We had a fantastic first day and really enjoyed walking around. We hope you enjoy the pictures.

The Grand Palace

     

Wat Pho

Reclining Buddha
Reclining Buddha (for scale)

We’re hoping to post frequently during the Asia leg of the trip, but no promises!

Visitor Count = 3

Guest Posts

As part of my ongoing campaign to get more people to Australia, I thought I’d give you a quick glimpse of the fabulous visit of Jen, our 3rd distinguished guest from the United States of America.

Jen picked a fantastic time to visit Sydney, Cairns and Melbourne. Jon and I were able to use a combination of Qantas points and the dregs of my Virgin Australia points to fly cheaply to Sydney to meet Jen upon her arrival down under. AND we had a 4 day weekend since Easter Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays here (thanks Australia!). Unfortunately, things didn’t start out very smoothly. Jon and I flew in a day before Jen was set to arrive and took the train from the airport to the hotel. Jon, me, two bags, a backpack and two phones got on the train. Jon, me, two bags, a backpack and one phone got off. Somehow I managed to leave my phone on the seat while Jon commented on someone leaving a sweater on the row behind. Fortunately, the train cleaners found my phone and turned it into the station manager, reinvigorating my faith in humanity. Maybe it was just because I have a phone no one would want to steal (according to one train employee), but I choose to believe people are mainly good (a notion that gets challenged each time I take a peek at the news and after our car received its second anonymous smash while parked on our street).

I lost my phone around 10 am and got it back around 3 pm. In the meantime, we headed to Watsons Bay on a ferry to take advantage of cracking weather and take my mind off the phone loss. Watsons Bay is a lovely little suburb known for fish and chips. There is also trail along the hills/cliffs above it with gorgeous views of the city and ocean. We filled up on fish and chips and then hit the trail to take in the views.

Requisite “Sydney is beautiful” pic

The next day, we woke up bright and early to make sure we’d be at the airport, waiting right outside of customs when Jen got through. Once again, things didn’t start off very smoothly. We made it to the airport just fine and got some coffee and waited and waited and waited. Luckily, Jen is an intrepid traveler and a smart cookie to boot so when she didn’t see us upon exiting customs, she didn’t panic. She took her time, got on the free wifi and sent an email asking where we were. She was at Arrivals C/D. Well… that explains why we didn’t see her. We only knew of one exit and it wasn’t Arrivals C/D. Oops. After rushing over to the correct exit we met up with Jen to begin her Aussie adventures.

The highlights from Sydney included ferry trips, Manly Beach, Bondi Beach, Circular Quay, the Rocks, Newtown, Darling Harbour, the botanical gardens, a night at the opera (Carmen al fresco), and lots of good coffee, food, beer and wine.

Opera outdoors!
Bondi

After a fabulous long weekend getaway, Jon and I returned to the chilly gloom of Melbourne while Jen jetted off to the lovely warmth of Cairns. Jon turned the house into chaos packing for his golf trip while I scrambled to maintain some sense of order for Jen’s arrival. Jon was set to leave on a Saturday morning and Jen was arriving that Saturday afternoon. I got up early to drive Jon to the airport, returned home, got the house in order, went for a jog and picked up some groceries and then drove back to the airport to pick up Jen. I took advantage of the ability to meet people at the gate here in 1990’s America and made it just in time to see Jen walk into the terminal. It is a weird terminal at the Melbourne airport where you walk more than 10 minutes to get from any gate back to civilization. It is the newest terminal so someone thought this was a good design idea. It was not me.

The highlights from Melbourne included tons of neighborhood exploring and market going – Prahran, South Yarra, Melbourne, Fitzroy, St. Kilda – with stops for coffee, food, wine and beer. On ANZAC day we hit the Shrine of Remembrance, the National Gallery Victoria, Degraves Street, Young and Jacksons, the Prahran RSL, and still had enough energy to make up an ad-hoc bar crawl home. It was such a blast.

Rugged up in Melbourne

I was sad to see Jen go. The only upside was being able to catch up on sleep with no early riser husband around.