Bangkok - first impressions

It's 3am local time and I can't sleep...so here's a quick summary of the last 2 days:

It's been a long 30 hours! It started with catching a taxi at my house at 6:30am to the Houston airport. I held a virtual meeting in the United Lounge with a team, and then boarded my flight to Tokyo around 11:30am.

The flight went well. I didn't sleep nearly as much as I had hoped though. Following the sun made it kinda hard. I watched a couple of movies and did nap for about 2 hours. We landed in Narita about 14.5 hours after leaving Houston.

I grabbed some free WiFi in the United Lounge in Tokyo and caught up on email and did some quick posts. I was intrigued to see my brother online, so I IM'd him and we did Facetime. The quality was pretty good. Gotta love technology -- I mean, I do this stuff for a living and I still get a kick at face-to-face video...for free!

Here's a quick photo of me in Tokyo after doing FaceTime with my brother.




The flight to Bangkok was actually nicer than the one to Tokyo. The electronics were quite a bit newer and I was able to sleep some more.

Arriving in Bangkok airport was delightful. It's a fully modern airport with some beautiful architecture. It's quite a long walk from the int'l terminal to customs, but it felt good to move after sitting all day.

A couple of first impressions of Bangkok (well, airport to hotel), unfiltered:

- There are a LOT of people here. Wow. I mean, wow.
- People are indeed friendly. A simple hello or thank you is almost always greeted with a friendly smile.
- 5 seconds after stepping outside of the airport, I remembered what REAL humidity feels like. Houston seems like a desert compared to here. Seriously folks, Houston is not humid in comparison.
- Driving from the airport to town had a fair amount of traffic considering it was at 1am.
- Beautiful hotel here for a reasonable price...now if I could just fall asleep. :-)










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