Day 20

It's time to head home. Why is it easier packing when you are heading somewhere then when you're heading home? Things just don't fit into your luggage as well when you're returning home. But after a lot of packing and re-packing it all fit and we headed to the airport for out 1:30 flight to Bangkok.

Security procedures in these countries are a bit different. You have to put your luggage thru an X-ray machine, but I'm not quite sure that it works because they never stop anyone, then you can check in. Luckily we're just under the weight limit for the bags and I get a window seat on the left hand side of the plane. Left hand because IF the weather is good we should be able to see the Himalaya's, but there was only 1 time that you could see any mountains. I took a couple of pics and of course I'm going to say that it was Everest because it was the only one I saw poking thru the clouds.

We got to Bangkok and check into our hotel at the airport because our flight to Hong Kong didn't leave until the morning. We had decided that we were going to go downtown to do some shopping in the markets because someone told us they had just been downtown a week before and everything back to normal after the riots they had there a couple weeks before. I was feeling a bit uneasy about the plan because we were heading downtown at night, during the day I wouldn't have had an issue, but at night….. Before we headed down we grabbed some supper and met DAP Hebeisen who was heading home later that evening. We told him our plans and his first comment was "well aren't you courageous!" So that just added to my uneasy feeling about our shopping plans. Just for some perspective, we finished eating around 8:30pm so by the time we left to go downtown it was 9pm. When we left he his words of warning were " remember the later you stay the more dangerous it is". This coming from someone who knows from living in the Philippians for most of his life would know….

If you've heard stories about Bangkok, you've probably heard that there are all manner of people and persuasions. So it wasn't a surprise to me that our taxi driver probably spent his off duty hours dressed like a woman. I'll leave it at that. Anyway he/she took us to a night market, that because of the problems there and that lack of tourist, were ready to sell their wares. So we got a couple good deals, got ripped off by the guys selling us T-shirts and sweated a lot. It was very humid and hot but we returned safely from our adventure….of course after being asked if we wanted girls, smoke and hash….not all at the same time.