Well, my parents arrived yesterday (Sunday). I’d been waiting for an hour when my mom appeared, but without my dad and Grandmother. After a hug, I asked where they were. “The lost luggage office” she replied. Lost luggage…two words you never want to hear, especially after just having flown for 24 hours to the other side of the world! After about 5 minutes, my dad and Grandmother appeared, bagless. Apparently the bags never made the plane in LA.
So we went to our hotel, which is really quite fancy compared to what I’ve been used to. It was actually better to be bagless, as we wouldn’t have fit in one taxi, at least I don’t think so. Yesterday was really uneventful…we walked around Banglamphu a bit while my family shopped for undergarments, as they had no clean clothes, or anything for that matter. The rest of the day, we sat in the lobby and chatted and tried to keep everyone awake (as you need to stay up till you’d normally go to bed to help you adjust to the 15 hour difference). My mom made it till 6:30pm!
My Grandma was up real early this morning, like pre-6am. Gotta love jetlag. I woke up to use the bathroom and we started chatting (we’re sharing a room) and she called me parents at 6:30am to see if they wanted to eat breakfast, being sure they’d be awake as they always are (but they weren’t). The hotel had quite the breakfast buffet and then we set off for a walk in the vicinity of the Grand Palace.
Along the way, we encountered my first true hoax. A man stopped to talk to me as I was wearing one of the King’s shirts, which progressed to him introducing us to someone else, who told us the Grand Palace and Wat Pho were closed till noon (not true!) and suggested we take a Tuk Tuk, which was conveniently right there, to see a store with great merchandise and some other sites. We were smart and walked away.
Aside from that, we visited the Grand Palace, which was my third visit, as well as Wat Pho, home to the giant reclining Buddha, also my third time. We also had dinner by Khao San Rd and dropped off laundry. Well, I’m sure my time is about up. That’s all for now! Wednesday we head to Chiang Mai!
