Defcon 4 in Bangkok

Our visit to Thailand was at the tail end of our Vietnam trip, and the intent of the trip was to decompress in the resort pool or at the beach before beginning the rush to get prepared to spend six weeks in the USA during Jessie's 2010 summer vacation.  As you recall from our Vietnam piece we were travelling with the Heihn's.  Arriving into Bangkok, Stacy and Elise said goodbye as they were beginning their trip to the USA, and Alex, Preston, and the Thornes in India continued on to the Hyatt in Hua Hin, which turned out to be about 4 hours in a van, without food (our bad), and without the ability to tell the driver to pull over, we're hungry.  We arrived at the resort tired, hungry, and with grumpy kids.

I guess we should have been aware of the increased security leaving the airport, but it in no way would have clued us into the security at the resort. It turns out that unbeknown to us, the MRC was holding their first ever conference in Hua Hin, and the Hyatt was ground zero for the activities.  The prime ministers from Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and a high ranking officials from China were in attendance.  There were gunboats off the beach, men in black, and fully functioning riot police and special armed forces behind every bush, rock, well, you get the idea.  Kinda took the mood out of chillaxing by the pool for two days.

Since our visit to Thailand there continue to be multiple reports in the world press of the internal issues that have bubbled up in Thailand, with many people killed, and we thank our lucky timing to have gotten home without getting caught up in their issues.  We hope the people of Thailand can resolve their issues peacefully and soon before there is too great a loss of human life.

We took no pictures of the resort as we figured if we did our camera would be confiscated.  It was a fairly nice resort with good food available, and the staff was very attentive.  Alli arranged to do a one hour sailing thing that Jessie and Preston enjoyed (out to the perimeter of the gunboats and back), but mostly we just hunkered in the pool under the slide and hoped not to be stats on a collateral damage report.

Our drive back to the airport was stressed as we had the same driver, who had not improved his English speaking skills in two days, and the traffic made us a bit late (by our perceived schedule) getting to the airport.  The driver dropped us in a parking lot, we don't know why, and we had to scramble with all our luggage into the departures area.  Luckily, our check in area was close to where we emerged from the elevated walkway, and we checked in with time to spare.

I suppose I should describe the Bangkok airport a bit.  It is huge! Upon arrival, we noticed signs indicating that immigration was 700 meters ahead, and once we spent an hour waiting in line at immigration, baggage claim was another 500 meters.  1.2 kilometers, and we had the short path!  Under one roof!  I have always thought Hartsfield in Atlanta was big, and then I thought Dubai was big, but Bangkok has topped all of them.

At any rate, we had to clear outbound immigration - easier than inbound because by now everyone was in jail from the riots, and then security, which was easy because they were flushing anyone they could out and making them the next countries problem.

As always, we returned glad to be back home greeted by a smiling Imtiaz at the airport and our personal house greeters - two happy tabbies.  Yes, home is where the cats are!