On December 17th – two days from now – we'll depart Los Angeles for parts well-known: Thailand with an 8.5 hour layover in Singapore. These are places Emily and I have spent significant time – both together and individually. And that's exactly why we're going. At this stage, we feel that most of the adventure is dealing with the kids and we don't need the environment to pose any great challenges.
So to well-trodden territory we'll go. But good, interesting, fun well-trodden territory. And of course even the most familiar of places changes over time, so we're bound to encounter new things since we were last in the Kingdom of Thailand in 2011.
For instance, the Kingdom has a new king for the first time in more than 70 years. Thankfully, the old king, Rama IX remains on all the currency and in our hearts. Few people remember life before him and the idea of life with the unpopular Rama X excites few Thais and certainly not this farang (foreigner).
To help develop some compatriots in mourning, I have shown Sennen some clips of the Thai King's Anthem as played in movie theaters before a move starts. The royal montages are some of the best tributes (or propaganda) I've ever watched and really helped endear the late king to people. From the voices of the children to his majesty's grace to toothless old women to how he brings rain to dry lands… and the heart tugging yet patriotic music… it's hard not to love him. Sennen certainly does now. And we will both go to Thailand with a reverence for the memory of his late majesty and a skeptical curiosity for the majesty we find seated today.
We have also selected locations that we haven't seen in awhile – Chiang Mai (Thailand's second-largest city, in the north) and Ko Chang (a lush green island in the eastern part of the Gulf of Thailand, not far from the Cambodian border). We will have only two days in Bangkok at the very end of our trip. We visited neither of these places in 2011, so it's been at least 15 years since I've been to Ko Chang and Emily never has. So everything old is new again. We will see the changes brought by time – both for our destinations and from our own viewpoints.
Emily and I are also lodging differently. While in 2011, we marveled at how we didn't stay in rough but charming budget accommodations as we did in our 20's, now we'll be staying in houses rented on Airbnb instead of moderate hotels (except in Bangkok where we'll still do a hotel). Now we're entering a world of kitchen appliances, multiple bathrooms and 2100 square feet of space. New digs for a new phase of life.
So the plan goes something like this. Sunday afternoon Singapore Airlines will take us from Los Angeles to Singapore with a brief stop in Seoul – arriving in Singapore at 6am Tuesday morning after almost 18 hours of flight. We go into town, enjoy some Singapore – making sure to get my favorite Singaporean street snack, martabak – and then back to the airport for an afternoon flight directly into Chiang Mai. By that point, it will be late afternoon and getting to our house, unpacking, getting dinner, bathing the kids and getting them to bed will be all that's left for the remainder of the day.
But unlike Tina and Ike Turner, Emily and I never do anything nice and rough anymore, we do it nice and as easy as possible. As with last year's trip to Bali, we're bringing help. My 24 year-old cousin Arielle – whose diapers I used to change – will be filling in for Jesper, our au pair who can't come this year due to rules about reentering the United States during his second/extension year as an au pair. Luckily Arielle – who did a semester in Thailand during college and speaks some Thai – was available and very happy to join us. With a three-on-two adult-to-child ratio, we feel ready to face the world – literally.
We'll stay in Chiang Mai from the 19th to the 26th and then take our boldest adventure yet – an overnight train to Bangkok which we booked with train-loving Sennen in mind. From Hualampong Station in Bangkok, our own private mini-bus will take us the four hours southeast to Trat where we can take the ferry across to Ko Chang.
We'll stay at a beach house on Ko Chang enjoying the white sand and warm water from the 27th to the 2nd, when we ferry back to Trat and the mini-bus whisks us back to Bangkok for our final 2.5 days of the trip.
One part of me – the part that stayed in budget accommodations in my 20's – feels this is seeing and experiencing so little of all that Thailand has to offer. But the other part – the one that can sometimes find the late afternoon/evening hours between nap time and bedtime inexplicably long and exhausting – feels this is an ambitious plan.
I can't wait to find out which me prevails.
In the meantime, we prepare. Course laid in. Bags mostly packed. One last load of laundry still to go… tying up the loose-ends of our daily lives. Two more days to go. Arielle arrives tomorrow afternoon. It's on!
