HELLO BANGKOK - Days 3 & 4

It was the weekend before Josh started work.  I had actually become quite fond of having him around all the time, and of course I felt more comfortable in this city with him (considering he is at least a foot taller than the average Thai). :)  We did go see about 5 more potential places to live...and still liked the first one we saw on the first day the best!  Our poor realtor.

We spent the majority of the weekend still battling our good friend jet lag (including 6 hour naps during the day and 3am bubble baths), soaking up some sun by the pool, and trying to locate our next edible (by our standards) meal.  Quite honestly, the food situation was getting quite exhausting.  I didn't necessarily care if I didn't eat healthy or eat much... it was Liam that was the challenge.  I literally cried a few tears when Josh found Campbell's Chicken noodle soup and Kraft Mac N Cheese at the store.    I at least knew Liam would eat those and some fruit.

Here's a couple pictures of how we spent our first weekend in Bangkok!  Not super interesting I promise... but considering what every single day in the past three grueling moving months involved, we were BEYOND thankful for some downtime.

These first 4 pictures are of us taking very early morning strolls around the hotel grounds :)

 Daddy is funny

Concentrating on his building blocks

 Thankfully, Daddy didn't break the hotel's playhouse :)

What is this?

 Lookin like a tourist for sure...

 He really enjoyed this big...chicken thing

Some beautiful Buddhist temples



Mr. Independent standing alone on the escalator

Quality time with Dada

and mama...

Water was pretty cold..

Jet Lag did a number on this little fella...too bad he doesn't always sleep this much.  Or at night for that matter.

 Room Service...Concept was great, food was not.

Meetings friends from all over the world. I've noticed he only shares his toys with girls though. Hmm.

 

So sweet.

Yum!

 

LESSONS OF DAYS 3 & 4:  It's OK to do NOTHING...unless you're Liam, then it's not ok and it's time to go play.  2.  Celebrate the small victories when you're overwhelmed in life.. Like finding mac n cheese in Asia :)  3.  BREATHE.  Just BREATHE.  Try to do so inside though as much as possible as the air outside here is questionable.

 

 Here ends my DAILY updates.  We were somewhat "SETTLED" at this point.  (Lies...so many lies... three weeks later while I write this and we're still not settled).  But everyday life began when Josh went back to work... So I won't bore you with the daily updates :)

 





HELLO BANGKOK - Day TWO

Day two was wicked.

We woke up on this Friday morning feeling pretty good!  We had gone to bed at 7:30pm.  Liam was up several times through the night (shocker to those of you who know he never sleeps very long without mommy), but nonetheless, we had a decent amount of sleep.  Josh had forewarned me that we would be STARVING for breakfast for the first few days (since that was our American dinner time). He was very right. 

After we feasted on fresh fruits, omelettes, pancakes, and other yummy foods; we decided to venture out of the hotel alone. 

 fresh fruit!  Mango, Pineapple, Watermelon, Cantelope, Dragonfruit, and Guava typically are the selections

Pastries, waffles, pancakes, French toast, etc...

 A variety of Asian dishes/vegetables/chicken/rice... everything with fish or oyster sauce...ick.

Hard to see, but it's a salad bar.. yes for breakfast!

Liam ate peanut butter.  It's protein, right?

By going out alone, I mean we didn't have our realtors who knew the city, and we also didn't have a driver, or our own personal van to hop in and out of.  It was time for "Team Johnson" to face Bangkok.  Josh had some general knowledge of the public transport and general directions of the city from previous visits.  However, of course it's different having Liam and I in tow.  Josh is a fast walker, we are not. 

We stepped foot into the public transportation common area.  There were a lot of people.  No really, A LOT of people.  It was probably 10am Bangkok time...why were there so many people?  Writing this a couple of weeks later, that really wasn't a lot of people compared to what A LOT of people REALLY is around here.

I'll get more into detail in my "Bangkok Crash Course" future post, but for now the brief explanation is that there are two main types of public transport.  The underground subway known as the MRT, and the sky train (monorail if you will) known as the BTS. 

Josh wanted to go to his new office to pick up his new cell phone so we would have a form of communication beyond WIFI.  The MRT would drop off the closest to his office so we hopped on.  Josh tried to give me a crash course on how to read the map and the stops, but I was so fuzzy headed and Liam was so grouchy that all it did was overwhelm me.  And we were in the middle of a crowd at the time.  This was the first time EVER I thought to myself "what the hell did we do?"  I was in a whole new world.  I didn't know how to get ANYWHERE, how to live, where I was, how to eat..... and the list goes on.  I think the stress was worse because I had a little person to raise in this new world somehow.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  Maybe two ton.  I couldn't even convince myself it would be fine at this time.  I might have cried a little at this point.  Not much.  Just a little. :)   Josh handled it well.  It was weird for him to be the cool, calm, and collected one for once!  He assured me it would be ok.  It will. :)

When we got to Josh's office, there was a little coffee shop.  Hooray!  Nothing better than coffee when you're stressed and exhausted.  I ordered myself a caramel frappe.  I received a hazelnut frappe AND a caramel cappuccino.  I just smiled.  Maybe I looked like I needed two?

We met some of Josh's very nice co-workers (whom he already knew), and got to see his new office.

 Handsome hubby in his new office :)

  

After our trip to his office, we went back to the room.  We were exhausted.  It was probably 1pm at this point.  We ordered room service to escape the crazy restaurants and people everywhere.  We decided to take a "Nap" around 3pm.  Yep... we woke up at 11pm.  All of us.  We had pretty much just slept a full night during the day. 

 

Had it just been Josh and I, we likely would have just closed our eyes and gone back to sleep til morning..  But it's not just Josh and I, and Liam wasn't ready to go back to sleep.  It was playtime.  We played around in our room for a couple hours until we couldn't stand it anymore. Around 2am we realized we were all pretty darn hungry.  So what is open at this time?  Good ole McD's! (Also known as McThai, here!)

 

Parents of the year here... we take our 1 year old to "dinner" at McD's at 2am where he consumes a very healthy meal of chicken nuggets, french fries, and even his first sip of soda.  (I won't mention that there were tranny hookers "working" a few tables away... that would make us REALLY bad parents!)   I'm not going to lie though, it tasted pretty darn good.





 Somehow, Ronald McDonald is even creepier here.

 

After our McThai adventure, we went back to the room.  Liam and I took a bubble bath (this would become a 3am ritual for about the next week) and played some more until he seemed sleepy.

 

I believe we went to "bed" around 5am and woke back up around 8.  Starving, of course. 

 

Here begins Day THREE.

 

LESSONS OF THE DAY:  1.  SMILING is better than CRYING when you can't communicate and you want to punch someone in the face because you're so frustrated.    2.  Jet lag is REAL.  I must admit I was never very easy on Josh after his international trips.. ooops.  3.  You can even get yourself hookers at McDonald's!  

HELLO BANGKOK! Day ONE

Here are a couple pictures of our hotel.  It's nice, yes.  But it's just a hotel so i'm not going to get too much into it. 

 

This is Liam's (and my) favorite room. The playroom.  We spend nearly 2 hours a day here and have met lots of people and kiddos from around the world!

 

This is clearly not a picture I took of our room, but it's what our room looks like without us in it :)  Our room is jam packed with a full sized crib, toys, suitcases, and some room to walk.  What isn't shown is we have a little refridgerator/freezer, microwave, two burner stovetop, and electric kettle.  The view is very nice from the 28th floor I must say.

 

 

 

It's a bathroom.  Enough said.  The toilet is European and offers quite the selection of "services".  We won't go there. We don't use them. 

 

 City View

 

 Fitness Room

 

Street View -- Always traffic.  This was actually a calm time.

 



We arrived around 11:30pm on Wednesday night, January 28.  By the time we got settled in to our "temporary  home" aka the hotel that we STILL reside at (i'm writing this on February 12) and tried to sleep it was 2:30am here, or 1:30pm in America.  It was pretty rough feeling.  Thursday morning we were to meet our "realtors" to go apartment hunting.  Most people, including myself thought WHY so soon!?  It actually worked out well to help start our time turn around. 

After eating an ENORMOUS breakfast (dinner time for us, we were STARVING), we met Khun Praow and Khun Golf (Khun is like Mrs.)  in our hotel lobby.  They had reserved a van and driver to take us around to different apartments/condos. I believe we saw 11 places that day with a break for lunch. At the end of the day, of course we liked the first place the most.  But we also wanted to see more.  I felt pretty good, only a smidge tired, and Liam seemed fine, maybe a little cranky.  I thought maybe we beat jet lag.  HA!  Josh told me Friday would be the bad day.  He was correct.

Thursday night, we weren't ultra hungry (since it was sleep time in America!) but what we did want to eat was a little American food.  There's a restaurant in Terminal 21 mall named Tony Roma's.  Ah...Ribs and other American goodies.  Sold.  We went in around 6:00.  We were leaving with to go boxes at about 6:15 because Liam had met his threshold.  He went straight to sleep and we ate out of boxes in the hotel room and did the same.  We survived until 7:30pm. 

I didn't really have any solid opinions of Bangkok after the first day.  It just seemed like a big city.  Lots of people.  Kind of smelly in places.  Relatively clean, which was surprising given the amount of people.  I had a lot to learn, of course.

Forgive me, I didn't take many pictures on day one because we were moving fast and Liam was suction cupped to my side. 

LESSONS OF THE DAY:  1.  If a Thai person tells you that it's not spicy or mild spice, it is damn spicy.  Wash down with water.  Repeat.  2.  Close your eyes while riding in a vehicle for the first time in Bangkok.  It's scary.  3. Open your eyes while walking in Bangkok, someone is always coming at you!  From every direction.  Always.

 

The flight.. EEK

Monday night we went out for a last Kansas City dinner with some of our friends... of course it was Jack Stack.  I'm drooling thinking about it now.  We got back to the hotel around 9 and realized we had less than 6 hours before we would be headed to the airport.  The 2:30AM alarm came TOO soon.

Josh had made sure when requesting a shuttle to the airport to let them know we needed A LOT of space for luggage.  Well, that happened.  We had our own "short bus" :)  Complete with terrible suspension.  It was a bumpy, cold ride.  Liam snoozed on my lap.  We made it and that's all that matters!  We checked in our massive amounts of luggage and went through security.  It was time for takeoff!

 

We flew Delta from Kansas City to Los Angeles.  It was almost 4 hours.  Liam was pretty good and only got wild maybe an hour of the trip? He snoozed for two of the other hours and behaved himself for one.  When we arrived at LAX, we got settled in the International Wing.  Because we were flying Business class, we got to hang out in the "business lounge".   Fancy stuff.   My focus was on how to wear my child out before the next leg of our trip.  We walked all over the place.  It wasn't enough, but worth the try.

 

The next flight we would take was from LAX to Seoul, South Korea.  This was the big kahuna.  The dreaded flight.  The "can't turn back halfway across the ocean" flight.  We were flying Asiana airline.  Josh had never flown Asiana before so none of us were sure what to expect.   It turned out to be a very nice airplane with incredible service!  We had "Pods" which gave us a decent amount of space to sit and for our "stuff".   Mine and Liam's pod were together in the middle and Josh's on the side.  We were flying in one of the cool double decker planes.

 

 





Smiles before takeoff!  Well, except Liam.  He hates having his picture taken these days. 

 

Liam slept for the first two hours.

 

I should have slept too, but I decided to eat the 5-course meal they brought me while it was hot (rare occurance) and drink a glass of wine. 

 

After Liam woke up the fun began.  We did everything to keep him as calm and happy as possible.  This included hours of NURSING.  Ouch.  We read books, tried to watch movies, sang songs, shared snacks.  You name it... we did it!  It was pretty exhausting.  But we survived.  That's what counts! 

 

 

We landed smoothly in Seoul.  We knew we only had about 40 minutes before our next flight took off by the time we were able to exit the plane.  This included collecting our stroller (which took time and threw us to the back of the security line which was FOREVER LONG), then rushing through a very busy airport with our carry-ons, stroller, Liam, and BIG OLE car seat.  It was super fun.  And by super fun I mean super stressful.  As far as we knew while we were standing in the back of the security line with our fussy toddler, they were boarding our airplane to Bangkok.  We tried pretty hard to communicate to the airport staff that we needed to catch another flight, but they didn't get it.  We finally made it out of the security line and practically ran to the gate of our flight to Bangkok.  We get there and see that they had DELAYED our flight to Bangkok because of our connecting flight from Seoul!  We were relieved and a bit irritated.  And we were NOT excited about getting on another long flight at this point.  We had almost been awake for 24 hours at this point.  Ugh.  Anyways, it was finally time to board our last flight from Seoul to Bangkok. 

 

He really is a rockstar for hanging in there.





 

 

This was a flight on a single deck Asiana plane.   Not as cozy as our long flight, but it was alright.  We ate another large 5 course meal and thankfully all of us slept a little bit.  We. Were. Exhausted.  Liam was awake the last hour and a half of the flight, when I was the MOST tired.  He wasn't. :)

 

 

We finally, FINALLY landed at Suvarnabhuvi airport in Bangkok. What an AMAZING feeling to get off that last plane.  Josh was a bit stressed about going through customs, however, the PERK of having traveled with an infant was that we got to go through the priority line.  HOORAY.  Let me say that again.  HOORAY.  The non-priority line would have been a nightmare.  Liam wanted to get out and run like a maniac at this point.  We got through customs without a fuss.  Next was on to the luggage claim.  When we saw our first of nine bags come up the ramp we were THRILLED.  They had MADE IT!!  Josh was a beast and pulled all nine of them off (mind you they all weighed >50 lbs) the first time they went around.  And then an angel appeared.. haha!  It was actually an airport employee who said he might be able to find us a large luggage cart!  We had NO idea how else we would have managed everything we had plus Liam.  He did indeed find us a luggage cart and helped us load up. We made our way towards the exit of the airport...our last stop was to take all of our luggage through customs.  Ugh.  Could of been a total nightmare.  They must have known what we had just been through... or they decided that going through our bags would be a nightmare for THEM.  :)  Anyways, we walked right on through and got into our van to take us to the hotel.

 

                                  

Our hotel is the big tower behind this shopping mall named "Terminal 21"

 

We arrived at the Grand Centre Point hotel in downtown Bangkok around 11:30pm  Bangkok time.  That is 10:30am central American time.  That means we left our hotel at 3:30am on Tuesday morning and arrived at 10:30am Wednesday morning.  Yep... 32 hours.  At this point our gas tanks were on empty and we were on pure adrenalin!  Let the adventure begin.