Monthly Archives: July 2013

Bangkok, Here I Am

Hello again! After two six-hour flights, I successfully made it to my first hotel in Bangkok. Apart from the long and exhausting travel duration, it all went pretty smoothly. I flew from Frankfurt to Doha where I just had to wait about half an hour before the boarding for the second flight started. Due to the time zone shift I started at 12:00 in Frankfurt and landed at 07:45 the next day in Bangkok.

I had been informed that there would a transfer to my hotel, but I did not have the full details yet. To my information, I should go so some counter to get assigned to a taxi. With that plan in mind I was surprised when I came out of the arrival hall as a woman (she turned out to be my tour guide for Bangkok) was holding a sign with my name on it. In the end, she and a driver escorted me in a minibus all the way to the hotel, which took about 40 minutes. For a moment I felt a bit bad, because they had to wait for me for over an hour until I got through the immigration and got my baggage back. But that feeling was soon gone I then was occupied with trying not to fall asleep right in the bus.

In the hotel I got to know more details about my trip. Only two other travelers have booked the same tour. While this is not much, it offers the possibility to plan more individually which is not a bad thing, I guess. And it will not be just the three of us the whole time, but more on that later.

After a short walk around the neighborhood I am now back in the hotel where I will go to bed really early to be fit for tomorrow’s sightseeing tour of Bangkok. And to prove that I am not in Europe anymore I shot the next random image I could find (no artistic intention here). Here you go:

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And it Begins

Step 1: Get to the airport in time after a way too short night. Done!
Step 2: Nervously wait for the departure. In progress…

My not so Daily Rhythm

IMG_2444When I started this blog, I intended to post just day-to-day events and pictures. As you can see there are some posts about Mannheim and some about my Band, Cabba Cabba. In recent times, I somehow started to do more excursions and vacations. I went to Oslo and Barcelona and did a hiking trip around the Edersee in the freezing cold. This all was not really “daily rhythm” and in the next weeks I definitely will break with the title of this blog.

This Wednesday, I will begin a six week long vacation in Thailand! These are two “firsts” for me. First, I cannot remember being on vacation that long. Second, I never left Europe yet. So why do this long and distant travel, you might ask. At first I somehow ended with a quite huge amount of vacation days available for this year. In order to “get rid” of them (not that this is a bad thing) I had to plan something big. Then I thought “why not go somewhere I never have been before?”. I studied the map and came up with South East Asia. I made this first decision based on recommendations from friends and driven by the thought that both the area and the culture would be something completetly new. After some more researching I ended up with Thailand as my travel destination. Although this problably is the mainstream country of the area, it should have enough exploration possibilities ready for me, as I do not know anything of it yet.

In the first weeks of my trip I will attend a group tour where we will travel to Thailand’s north. During this time, I will have to opportunity to discover the area, maybe do some hiking and get to know the hill tribes that live there. The second part of my trip is not fully planned yet, but I intend to do some “backpacking”, probably in the southern part of the country. You can see this is just a rough overview of the trip yet. This is more or less intended: I did not want to plan everything ahead and bring some spontaneity to this trip. As soon as I am in Thailand, there will be enough impressions and ideas where to go and what to see.

My plan is to post here regularly to keep you up-to-date. Of course I also want to use this trip to do more photography, so expect some images, too.

Now I will continue to work on my todo list that I want to complete before my departure (this post is one item of it. Check!) and slowly begin packing. So I guess I should get back to work now, as there are quite some things left to do. See you soon (or read, actually)!