We Are HERE!

We touched down at the airport in Bangkok at 11:16 p.m. their time... which I think is 12:16 p.m. at home since Thailand is 11 hours ahead of Tennessee. I didn't have any luck just yet with trying to call using our Thai cell phone, but we definitely do not have cell service on our regular cell phones. So, I wanted to go ahead and post this so everyone will know that we arrived safe and sound. As Matt said earlier, the flight from Knoxville to Detroit was very bumpy... something to do with flying around or through some clouds. However, that was a very small plane, and the plane we left on from Detroit was a double-decker 747 - and it was so much better. I may even be tempted to use the word Awesome, but only because the flight crew was very nice, they were bringing around food every few hours, and we couldn't even tell we were in the air the flight was that smooth. The only problem there was that we were over an hour late leaving Detroit, and we knew that our connecting flight in Tokyo only allowed us an hour and a half layover (before the delay ever happened)... so it was pretty much landing in Tokyo at 6:00 p.m. their time, meeting with a Delta agent that knew we were needing to catch the connection to Bangkok (they radioed ahead and advised them to hold on because we were coming!), and then hopping on the next flight ASAP. There definitely was no time to look over Tokyo's airport at all, so that will have to wait until we start back home. The bigger planes are definitely the way to go! It's hard to believe we have been gone a day and a half, and we really couldn't sleep very well on any of the planes, so we are tired but excited to finally be here!

Anyway, we landed in Bangkok like I said, and then we had to go through a security checkpoint with our passports, exchange our money for the Thai Baht, walk through customs, and then find our driver the hotel sent for us. He was waiting at the door with our name and was very respectful and nice. The drive from the airport was very quiet. We didn't see any protesters out and about, but we did see a lot of shopping going on on the sidewalks - you would have thought it was the middle of the day instead of the night!

Well, now we are all checked in and need to do some investigating on what is a normal tip in Baht money for people like our driver. Someone told me 100 Baht was good, and that sounds like a lot, but the exchange rate is something like 1 American Dollar = 30 Baht.

I am putting some pictures up so you can see where we have been today and are staying now. The pictures of the airplane was our big monster we left Detroit on for Tokyo. Inside Detroit's airport is a tram that runs above you, so you will see that picture too. The rest are taken inside our hotel room and the picture outside is our view of the city from our balcony.

Feel free to make comments so we know you are with us on our jouney!

Much love,

Amy and Matt