Today was a day of shopping, shopping, and more shopping. Exactly what I came halfway around the world to do, right?

My sister, myself, and our parents started off at the ICONSIAM mall again. We poked around various shops, mostly looking at clothes. My mother and sister wanted to look at the high-end clothing shops while my father and I were on the hunt for certain types of deals, so after an hour or two, we split up, with Mom and Jenny staying at ICONSIAM while my father and I hopped in a Grab (the Thai ride-share app) and headed toward a ridiculously huge shopping mall called the MBK Center.

The MBK Center, according to Wikipedia, was the largest shopping mall in Asia when it opened in 1985. It's eight storeys tall and several football fields long. The thing seriously stretches on farther than the eye can see. There are quite a number of reputable shops and an even larger number of disreputable shops where one can purchase all sorts of cheap and/or counterfeit goods.

I bought a blower bulb for my camera for 200 baht (I could probably have bargained it down to 150 but 200 was cheap enough). While walking past a retailer selling jewelry, I noticed that the retailer was selling fake high school class rings. The rings said "HIGH SCOOL" (yes, without the H in school). Somewhere on this planet there are people running around with HIGH SCOOL rings who don't know that it's misspelled. Yikes! I wanted to snap a photo but the retailers understandbly don't want you taking photos of their wares.

Oh, and I also came across the P. P. Shop. I have no idea if the proprietors know how, uh, how wrong that sounds to English speakers.

It seems that there are tons of names like that here in Thailand. There's Bangkok, the Bang Rong Pier in Phuket (pronounced foo-KET, though I'm sure there are tons of people who read it as "fuck it" at the first go), and there's even an outfit that makes electrical junction boxes called Kumwell. I'm sure I could find plenty more perfectly innocent yet dirty sounding names here if I searched; this is just scratching the surface.

After a long, long day of shopping, my father and I met up with my mother and sister, and the four of us had dinner together at the ICONSIAM mall. The dinner was incredible but it stretched past the mall's closing time. No one kicked us out as such, but I could see the restaurant staff nervously looking at us, probably dreading deciding which of them was going to have to tell us to kindly go the fuck home. Luckily, we left before that happened, leaving a generous tip on the way out as a way of saying "sorry for overstaying our welcome".

As we waited for the ferry to take us back across the river, I saw a bird perched on a tree branch floating down the river. I wished I had my telephoto lens and that it was during the day, because the bird looked like it was surfing.

Tomorrow evening, my sister and I leave Bangkok, headed for Tokyo. I enjoyed today's outing, but I want to see another side of Bangkok besides shopping if I can find the time to do so. There's a cable-stayed bridge farther up the river that I can see from the hotel room. I'd be thrilled to see it close-up. I've never seen a cable-stayed bridge up close before, and it's exactly the kind of thing I would nerd out over.

Today was another day of travel. We packed our bags and left Patong this morning for a midday flight to Bangkok. The route from Patong to Phuket International Airport was long, winding, and mostly one lane in either direction (and therefore slow as hell). The only notable thing we drove past on the nearly one-hour car ride was a rubber tree farm.

The flight from Phuket to Bangkok was about ninety minutes long and totally uneventful apart from the thirty-minute delay in boarding the aircraft. From there, it was another half-hour drive from Don Mueang International Airport to our hotel.

Have I mentioned how absolutely massive Bangkok is? It's a modern sprawling city of 14.6 million people that just goes on as far as the eye can see in every direction. It makes Patong (a tiny beach town of 19,350 people) seem like a dump. Our hotel here is right along the Chao Phraya River, which runs right through Bangkok and is a massive sight to behold. Boats and barges of all shapes and sizes go up and down the river all day and night, from commuter ferries to cargo barges to party cruises with disco lighting and loud music.

Jenny was feeling under the weather with a sore throat, so she rested in the room while I went out to dinner with my parents. We went across the river to the ICONSIAM shopping mall, which is eight stories tall and more mind-bogglingly huge and ultraluxurious than any shopping mall I've ever been in before. We had a varied selection of surprisingly good Japanese food for dinner and the total came to maybe 3000 baht for the three of us.

Tomorrow I plan to get out and explore Bangkok a bit. For now, however, it's time to go to bed, as all the travel today has wiped me out...but not before stepping out to stop at 7-Eleven to get a chocolate bar or some cookies. My sweet tooth is kicking in.

This morning, I woke up in pain. I had managed to sleep in a strange position, and my back was sore as a result. Luckily, Patong has pharmacies every other storefront, so finding one that was open early was not a problem. I took a ten minute walk to the nearest open pharmacy, bought some ibuprofen and acetaminophen (300 baht total), and walked back to the hotel. On the way back, I saw parents dropping their kids off for school. It was pretty much like any school drop-off you've ever seen, except everyone was on motor scooters instead of in minivans and SUVs.

Even at this early hour of the morning (8 AM or so), there were tons of motor scooters in every direction on Patong's streets. There is no escaping them. Some folks were driving their scooters the wrong way on the street. Some others were driving on the sidewalk. Being a pedestrian in this town is a harrowing experience no matter which way you slice it.

On the way back to the hotel, I found a street vendor selling the smelliest fruit known to mankind: durians! The odor from these things is so strong that many hotels have banned the fruit from their premises.

I got back to the hotel to discover that Jenny, who had failed to drink enough water the past few days, was doubled over in pain from constipation. We found a clinic in Phuket Town that would perform a colonic irrigation in an effort to lubricate everything down there, made an appointment, and got into a car to head to the clinic.

Upon arrival, we were a bit shocked that there was no paperwork to fill out. Jenny just walked into the exam room and the irrigation commenced. Within minutes, the colonic blockage was cleared and Jenny felt a trillion times better. She did report feeling a little awkward given that there were tubes poked up her rear end and mirrors positioned so that she could see the whole procedure.

As we got back to the hotel, it started drizzling a tiny bit. The moment we stepped through the front door, the heavens opened up and the drizzle became a torrential downpour. Fifteen minutes later, the rain stopped just as suddenly as it began. I'm glad that my camera didn't get wet.

One of the weird things about Thailand is that, while all the muzak in every store is American and British pop songs, it's rare to hear the original recordings. Every song is a similar-sounding cover. A very good cover, but a cover nonetheless. Surely you'd think that it would be easy to find the original in the age of streaming.

Tomorrow we fly to Bangkok to spend a couple of nights. I am very excited at the prospect of getting to see Thailand's biggest city.

This morning, after Jenny and I had showered and gotten dressed for the day, we met our parents in one of the hotel's restaurants. As we sat down, one of the other hotel guests came up to us and said "I couldn't help but notice how nice you smelled as you walked past. What is that scent?"

"It's insect repellent."

"What? No way!"

"Yeah, it's an all-natural lemon and eucalyptus bug repellent spray. Seems to work really well too, because we haven't been bitten yet."

I'm sure they were not counting on it being insect repellent, because that's where the conversation died.

After breakfast, it was time to head off to a Thai cooking class. My mother, Jenny, and I were picked up by our instructor and whisked away to our first stop, which was a market where we were to buy all the ingredients for our recipes. Although the class had been advertised as a group class, the three of us were the only members of the group.

The market was nothing short of amazing. It was completely unlike any supermarket I've been to in the U.S.; everything was fresh and looked and smelled incredible. We purchased all the things we were going to cook, and then we were transported to the class itself. Surprisingly, the class was hosted in a large room in the instructor's home. We felt very honored that we were being invited into the instructor's home.

We learned to cook five different dishes. I could go on and on about the class, but I'll let the pictures of the finished dishes speak for themselves. Every dish tasted twice as amazing as it looked.

We returned to the hotel with more food than we could possibly eat, and took naps.

After the nap, I went out walking around Patong with Jenny. We stopped by 7-Eleven to buy some bottled water and some snacks. Fun fact: the chocolate bars here in Thailand come in tiny tiny sizes; the regular sized candy bars we're used to in the U.S. are considered extra-large here.

We also found Phuket Tours by Jenny. The two Jennys had a good laugh upon meeting each other.

Patong is truly a wilder place than Krabi. Everything is bigger and crazier here, including the wiring disasters on the telephone poles.

I am having an amazing time here. I should, however, buy proper walking shoes, because my feet get sore way too quickly walking around in the shoes I have now. My feet will be dead if I continue walking around in my current shoes! Luckily, shoes are inexpensive here in Patong.

New Year's Eve was a blast. We walked along the main street of Krabi, where everyone was partying like there was no tomorrow, and went out for dinner. A live band played a selection of American rock songs from the 20th and 21st centuries. We weren't initially planning on staying out until midnight, but once dinner stretched past 11:30 PM, I convinced everyone that it would be a total waste to go back to the hotel and sleep through midnight.

The street was packed with people. It seemed like there was a different party in front of every other shop along the street. At one, a bunch of girls were dancing while some random guy handed out 100-baht banknotes to as many people as possible. At another, a car's sound system blasted out a crazy Thai dance tune, the title of which translates to "Do You Miss Each Other on a Rainy Day?" (Jenny used Shazam to find it and has not stopped talking about it for the past 24 hours).

As midnight approached, everyone headed for the beach. Lights filled the sky. I initially thought the lights were drones, but the lights turned out to be countless paper lanterns floating in the air. Jenny bought a lantern for 100 baht and we lit and released it, an act which supposedly brings good luck.

Midnight came and so did the fireworks. Giant professional-sized fireworks lit by amateurs. Surely nothing could go wrong with this, right? Not ten minutes into the new year, someone managed to light a giant firework that failed to fly into the sky before exploding all around us. We took this as our cue to go home before the party got even crazier.

The next morning, we checked out of the hotel in Krabi and waited for the van to come pick us up and take us to the speedboat that would take us across the bay to Phuket. When the van arrived, it was not a van at all; it was a Songthaew, which is basically a big truck adapted for passenger service. It was full of backpackers. Of course, we were the only schmucks on the thing with a full load of luggage. We also were sure we were going to die, as the songthaew has no seatbelts to speak of.

Once the songthaew arrived at the pier, we discovered that the aforementioned speedboat was basically a floating songthaew into which we were to be packed like sardines for the one-hour journey to Phuket. In retrospect, it would have been safer and easier to hire a driver to drive us all the way around the bay.

Our final destination for this leg of the trip was a city called Patong. This place is wild. It's a tourist town like Krabi, but on a way larger scale. It feels like the city depicted in Blade Runner: there are wall to wall people and traffic for miles in every direction, and the two somehow coexist with few traffic fatalities.

We walked around tonight because Jenny wanted to find a tailor to make her a custom winter coat. Once the tailor was located and the order placed, we went home in a tuk-tuk, which is like the songthaew but on a tinier scale. Riding in one is only a mildly terrifying experience.

Today started off with me walking around Krabi visiting every pharmacy I could find. I was looking for certain feminine hygiene products for Jenny, who had forgotten to bring what she needed. I must have visited a dozen shops, and none of them had what Jenny had requested. Granted, these stores were all the size of a postage stamp, but it must royally suck to need what Jenny needed and not be able to find it. I came back empty-handed, so she made do with a shower.

We then prepared to visit Railay Beach, a secluded beach on the other side of a rocky ourcropping to the south of Krabi. The only way to get to this beach is via boat. It's a popular destination for people who are visiting Krabi. So popular, in fact, that there is an entire fleet of boats to take visitors to and from the beach. Tickets are 100 baht per person each way (100 baht is about three dollars).

These boats are not exactly the safest mode of transportation, but their operators are incredibly skilled. Upon arrival at the Railay Beach landing spot, our boat operator managed to slot the boat right between two other boats with mere inches to spare on either side, and the boats did not touch.

From the landing spot, there is a 1.2 kilometer walk to Railay Beach itself. This path goes through some incredible scenery. There are stalactites unlike anything I've ever seen. They almost look manmade. You would think you were at Disneyland.

Railay Beach itself is beautiful. The water is warm, the sand is soft, and there is a massive cliff face to the south that must stretch up a thousand feet in the air. Stalactites hang from the cliff face. There are caves at the base of the cliff. The whole thing is unlike anything I could have possibly imagined.

In one of the caves at the southern end of the beach, there is a shrine of sorts. At first glance, it seems to be full of logs of some sort. They're all cut in a similar way, with one rounded end. Upon closer inspection, the logs appear to be pretty damn phallic in appearance. Is this a shrine to penises?

Yes. Yes it is. Jenny tells me that this shrine is meant to satisfy and ward off horny female ghosts. It sounds like gibberish to me, but who am I to judge?

Toward the end of our visit to the beach, there was a commotion near the shrine. I looked around, and everyone had turned to look at a rocky outcropping. I looked as well, and there was a troop of wild monkeys clinging to the rocky outcropping. I'm sure the monkeys were terrified of all the people looking at them. I'm lucky I had my telephoto lens, because I was able to snap some amazing pictures of the monkeys.

One monkey broke off from the rest of the troop and ran through the crowd of people to climb a nearby tree.

By this time, it was getting late in the day, and we decided it was time to start heading back so we could catch a boat back to Krabi. I had an amazing time on the beach, and certainly will never forget today. I feel rather ashamed that I was so cynical about visiting the beach today.

Tonight is New Year's Eve! I will take plenty of photos and blog about the goings-on in Krabi, but that's a post for tomorrow.

Yesterday we arrived in Krabi, a touristy beach town in the south of Thailand. Our flight here from Bangkok was uneventful. Interestingly enough, even though we were on AirAsia, which is a low-cost 100% economy-class airline, and even though the flight was only an hour long, there was a meal service. Compare that to Southwest Airlines, who think that a packet of pretzels and a cup of soda are enough to get you through any flight.

It's nice and warm here. About eighty degrees fahrenheit with sixty percent humidity, and this is the cool season. I can't even begin to imagine what the weather must be like here during the summer.

As the day started off, Jenny had the misfortune of getting her hairbrish tangled up in her hair. We attempted to remove it, but eventually had to resort to using scissors to cut the tangled bit of hair (and the hairbrush) from her head. She was rather crabby and upset about this. This is why you don't buy hair care tools at the dollar store.

We spent most of the day walking around the town, having lunch, and poking around various shops, buying little things here and there. It's a nice enough town, but so very focused on tourists that I don't feel like I'm getting a true taste of Thai culture while I'm here. I did, however, discover that not only has Thailand been infiltrated by McDonald's, but that Ronald McDonald is depicted doing the Wai, the traditional Thai greeting which consists of palms pressed together, fingers upright, and the head bowed slightly.

Thailand seems to have a very relaxed attitude to safety. In addition to the way road traffic operates here, I discovered that the outdoor electrical mains wiring is to a rather, uh, lower standard than would ever be considered acceptable in the States. I've been in poorly maintained telephone wiring closets before, but the electrical wiring here takes the cake.

I also found an emergency call box that seems to have long since corroded away past the point of usability. Presumably this was installed sometime in the late 20th century and everyone merely assumes it will continue to work. Either that, or they know it doesn't work and they don't care. Obviously it doesn't matter any more since everyone has mobile phones now, but I was still somewhat horrified to discover that this was still sitting there on the beach.

Walking around on the beachfront, we were accosted by countless salespeople trying to get us to buy all sorts of things we obviously didn't need, including custom-tailored suits and taxi rides. Luckily, the "no thank you" gesture is universal.

Tomrrow we are supposed to take a boat ride to a secluded beach away from the main town. Hopefully there's a town there to explore, because I feel like relaxing on the beach is a waste when there's an entire culture to discover and experience and learn about.

Despite the debacle with Southwest Airlines, Jenny and I (and our baggage) made it to Los Angeles in time to catch our flight to Bangkok via Tokyo. Neither of us had been to either Japan or Thailand before, so this was the true beginning of the adventure.

Our six-hour layover in Tokyo began at about 5 AM local time after a very uneventful twelve hour flight on American Airlines; both of us spent most of that flight asleep. Upon arrival in Tokyo, we were amazed at the level of courtesy and respect displayed by the staff at Haneda Airport. In the U.S., we would expect to be guided to our destination within the airport by a series of signs, but in Japan, we were guided to our destination by people whose job it was to point out where to go and where not to go. We felt as though we were being welcomed as honored guests in the country.

At 5 AM, everything in the airport was closed. Our only option for food and drinks at that time of the morning was a number of vending machines scattered throughout the terminal. Luckily, these vending machines sell all sorts of snacks and beverages. Unluckily, all the instructions are written (and spoken) in Japanese, a language I don't know at all, apart from the very basics: "konnichiwa" (hello), "arigato" (thank you), and "eigo ga hanasemasu ka?" (do you speak English?). Obviously, it's not going to be very helpful to ask a vending machine if it can speak English. After making a valiant but failed effort to buy a sandwich out of a vending machine, I found a person who knew both Japanese and English, and she showed me the correct sequence of steps to follow in order to buy items from the machine.

To my surprise, what I had purchased was not just a sandwich; it was three totally different kinds of sandwiches in one package. There was a tuna salad sandwich with cucumber, a hard-boiled egg sandwich, and a ham and cheese sandwich. And boy, were they delicious. The yolks in the hard boiled egg sandwich were an incredibly deep shade of orange. The bread had the most incredible texture. It was a great snack. Other vending machine highlights included iced coffee and a re-hydration beverage called Pocari Sweat (definitely a strange and unappetizing name in English, but it tasted very good).

By 7 AM Tokyo time, the various kiosks in the food court had started to open for business. One of these kiosks served sushi. In the U.S., airport sushi is right down there with supermarket sushi in terms of low quality, but the sushi we bought at Haneda Airport was some of the best sushi I've ever eaten. The fish was incredibly fresh and had an amazing texture, and the sushi was served with a ceramic mug of very good hot green tea. I made sure to go back to the chef in the kiosk who prepared the sushi and tell him "domo arigato! That was delicious!" and he seemed very appreciative that the meal was an enjoyable one.

A couple of hours later, we discovered a kiosk that served frozen blended green tea with whipped cream on top. We bought two of them and tried them out. To our surprise, the drink wasn't sweet at all. The flavor was very refreshing. Even the whipped cream wasn't sweet.

The toilets in Haneda Airport were also pretty amazing. The restrooms were spotlessly clean and the toilets had bidets built-in! Jenny discovered that the women's toilets had a machine with a sensor that, upon sensing your presence in the stall, made the sound of running water in order to mask the sound of going to the toilet.

Our flight from Tokyo to Bangkok was on Japan Airlines. The level of service on this airline puts any American airline to shame. It seemed like there was a new meal, beverage, or snack being offered at least once every 30 minutes. The food was incredible, the snacks were delicious, and the beverages (mostly hot tea or coffee) were also very good. My sister and I were not seated next to each other, however, and when I asked the woman sitting next to me if she spoke English, she responded with "sukoshi" (which means "only a little bit"). So I spent most of the flight playing video games.

Oh, and the toilets on Japan Airlines? They also had bidets built-in.

Our arrival in Bangkok was fairly uneventful. There was an AIS booth selling SIM cards very close to our arrival gate. I bought one for me and one for Jenny. The booth only accepted cash, however, and at 1700 baht each, this ate up pretty much all of the Thai cash I had brought with from Las Vegas. But boy am I glad I had that cash on me!

Once through immigration and customs, I set up the Grab ride-hailing app on my phone, and we were off to our hotel. Bangkok has two airports (Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang) and although we arrived at Suvarnabhumi, the hotel was next to Don Mueang to make it easy to catch the next day's flight to Krabi. This meant a one-hour car ride through Bangkok. People are more lax about traffic safety in Bangkok than I'm used to in the U.S.; I saw people riding in the backs of pickup trucks and there were plenty of occasions where I was sure we were going to crash into a motorcyclist.

Bangkok has the largest billboards of any city I've ever been to. Right outside Suvarnabhumi was a billboard that was the equivalent of ten ordinary-sized billboards all crammed up next to one another. And there were plenty of others that were just massive. When I return to the U.S., I'll never be able to look at billboards the same way again.

Upon arriving at the hotel in Bangkok, I was exhausted, and so I fell asleep fairly quickly. The next morning was a domestic flight to Krabi, which I will detail in the next blog post.

Yesterday my sister (we'll call her "Jenny") and I started the first leg of our journey. We thought that, since it was Christmas day, it would be an easy day to travel, with light passenger traffic.

Instead, we discovered that the airport was a complete zoo.

However, this was not the worst of our problems. We initially were notified that the flight was an hour late. Then, as time went on, the flight departure time was pushed further and further into the future with no sign of when we were going to board. One hour became two hours, which became four hours, which became seven hours.

I can't really fault Southwest Airlines for this, as this was all due to the massive winter storm that covered most of the continental U.S. and completely messed up scheduling for the entire flight network. Jenny and I remained calm through all of this. However, some other passengers were rather upset. Any time anyone with a Southwest Airlines uniform showed up anywhere near the gate, they were accosted by passengers like seagulls fighting over a french fry.

Eight hours after the flight was supposed to leave, it was finally cancelled. We trekked down to baggage claim to figure out what was going to happen with our bags. We were told the bags would be flown to Los Angeles without us.

We went to the ticket counter to see if we could get booked on another flight. The line was like the line for a ride at Disneyland in that it was full of screaming children and lasted hours. Once we reached the front of the line, the Southwest ticketing system crashed and the ticket agent announced that they would only be processing refunds from that point on. We got a refund and booked a flight for the next morning on American Airlines.

By the time we reached Los Angeles, we were greeted with a sea of checked bags.

Miraculously, we found our bags in front of the pile after just two minutes.

Now that we have our bags, there is nothing stopping us from getting to Thailand.

In order to ensure that I don't receive a mobile phone bill for approximately ten trillion dollars worth of data and voice roaming upon my return from Thailand, I've decided that the best course of action is to buy a Thai SIM with a Thai phone number. These plans are pretty cheap (a 300 GB 30-day data plan is about US$37.50, but it's not clear whether that includes any voice minutes) and it's even possible to buy the SIM before getting to Thailand. The SIM is theoretically emailed to you as a QR code (what a future we live in) and you activate it once you get to Thailand.

Simple, right?

Here's where it gets complicated. Because of a know-your-customer law in Thailand, it's now necessary to provide your passport and a photo of yourself in order to buy the SIM. AIS, the Thai mobile phone carrier, uses your webcam to capture images of you and your passport. And this is the frustrating bit, because absolutely nothing I did with my webcam produced an image of my passport that was acceptable to AIS. I tried for what felt like an hour before giving up and trying the button that lets you submit an "unacceptable" image of your passport.

At this point, I thought I was in the clear, but it was a false sense of hope. Next, they wanted me to take a photo of myself with my webcam. Despite lining my face up with the guide image, the image capture website flatly refused to see or recognize my face at all. And this time there was no button that lets you manually snap a photo.

I gave up.

In theory, it's possible to buy an AIS SIM at the Bangkok airport once you arrive. I can only assume that, since they're in the business of actually selling these things, their system is set up properly for taking photos of new customers and their passports. I will keep my fingers metaphorically crossed for the entire flight and hope that it's actually possible for me to give them my money in exchange for a QR code or even a physical SIM.

My foreign currency order arrived at the bank this morning!

I ordered ฿3500 (about $100) just in case I get to Thailand, I can't get my credit card to work, the credit card's fraud department is closed, the currency exchange window is closed, and I need to get a taxi and a meal right away. I'm probably being overly paranoid  about this, but I'd rather have the cash and not need it immediately than be stuck with a useless plastic rectangle as my only method of payment.

I was expecting the bank to give me seven ฿500 notes. Instead, what I got was an assortment of denominations: four ฿500 notes, ten ฿100 notes, two ฿50 notes, and twenty (!) ฿20 notes. I can only assume that the bank's currency exchange people know what they're doing and that it's difficult to pay for small things with large denominations in Thailand, much like many businesses here in the U.S. will refuse to take payments in bills larger than $20.

I also ordered ¥7000 (about $50) for my layover in Tokyo, because from what I can gather, cash is preferred in Japan for many things, and many smaller businesses don't take credit cards at all. However, this order had only five notes: two ¥2000 notes and three ¥1000 notes.

Perhaps it's easier to make change in Japan? I guess I'll find out.

In about a month, I will be heading to Thailand with my immediate family and spending roughly two weeks there. This will be my first international trip in almost fifteen years as well as my first time in Asia, and as you might expect, I am very excited.

For now, I'm starting to get the essentials in order. I ordered a bunch of 100mL plastic bottles from Amazon into which I've started to decant the necessary toiletries (soap, shampoo, mouthwash, hair gel, etc.) because I don't want to have to waste time running around trying to find all this stuff in Bangkok once I arrive. To make the job easier for any baggage inspectors who might be ruffling through my luggage, I'm labeling the bottles in English, Thai, and Japanese (as I've got a stop in Tokyo before I get to Bangkok).

I used Google Translate to translate the labels into Thai and Japanese, so I hope that the translations are accurate.