"Bangkok - Oriental City" a Bangkok Travel Page by Mattison

And thus, the Mattisons step off the plane and take their first fleeting glance of the city of angels, Los Angeles? NO!...Bangkok!!! The local time was 23:30 (11:30 p.m. for you silly Americans). After a total flight time of one thousand one hundred and forty minutes, it felt good to arrive to this foreign city that Nicole and Natalie had only seen in obscenely boring home movies.

You see, the mother and father lived in Bangkok from 1983-1985, and the son was born there at Smithewai hospital in 1984. Too bad, he can never be the American president - like he'd ever have the chance! The 'rents (short for parents for all you not up-to-date with hip lingo) had always wanted to come back to visit. The girls just really wanted to shop with that 40 Baht to 1 dollar exchange rate. And Joey, ya, he came too.

Now, back to the subject - we've stepped off the plane and meandered our way through the airport which I must say was clean, comfortable, and yes, the bathrooms met approval. We passed through customs with relative ease and met our first Thai, our way cool, tubular driver, Nick! He was short, balding, walked with joy and always wore a white shirt, blue pants, and of course a genuine Thai smile. As he drove us to the hotel (on the left side of the road, mind you), we realized that oh no, we were not in Kansas anymore, not even Texas. However, we saw no munchkins singing and dancing - a somewhat comforting observation, though we did see tourists, Thais eating, people shopping, much traffic, and the usual crowd of night crawlers - by now it was past midnight. Did I mention that we drove in the one-way lane the wrong way? Ya, that was cool - Nick's the man! We arrived at the hotel and 7 hours later had officially awoken and were ready for their long-awaited vacation.