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.

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!

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

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