First Week

I finally made it to Thailand! YAY! A total trip of traveling for about 25 hours. Gahhh…it was terrible! This is my first post since I have been here. I haven't had any access to the internet at either of the locations I have been at. I am actually sitting in the lobby at our hotel as I type this post. It's after 8pm and I have been up since 6:3oam, which most of the day has been spent on a bus traveling from our post-tour. I am soooo sick of traveling. Anyways, I wanted to update everyone on what I have been doing since I arrived.

Of course, I didn't bring down my journal that I started to help remind me of the each days events, so I am purely going to go off of memory. As most of you know, my memory does not serve me too well.

Here we go:::::

Tuesday the 7th: Arrived in Bangkok around 11:30pm, went straight to hotel to check-in and to catch up on sleep.

Wednesday the 8th: First day in Bangkok and start of Thailand Travel Mart Conference. The morning was spent at a market close to our hotel. I didn't end up buying anything, but they have the cutest clothes and accessories! Most of which could only fit a small child:) Natives of Asian are just so damn small. The conference was slow and basically pure agony. Not exactly set up well. Kelly and I registered and then had about 4 hours of down-town until we had the buyer/seller introductions. The introductions were held in a big conference room where all the sellers came around to the buyers tables to introduce themselves/company, in hopes of setting up an appointment. We made several appointments for the 9th and 10th, then left the conference to head back to the hotel. The "Welcome Ceremony" at the conference was only serving apps and cocktails, so we decided to scratch that and roam around the Night Market. The Night Market is filled with vendors selling all types of Thai goods. Unfortunately, they are closing down the market to build up commercial real estate. The market is such a cool asset to the city that it is hard to imagine even why they would close it down. We called it an early night after the market. We had to get up the next day at 6 to be at the conference.

Thursday the 9th: The entire morning and afternoon as spent meeting with various sellers from Thailand and the surrounding countries. We actually set up a few site visits with Lub.D hotels, Karen Hill Tribe Lodges and Buddy Hotels. In a site inspection, the hotel provides a comped room for the buyer to stay at and a viewing of the property and services. In other words, we get to stay at 3 hotels for free. I'm definitely starting to see the "perks" of the travel industry! We left the conference a little early and caught a cab with our new friend, Mark. A fun, comical guy from Australia. Kinda cute too. Later in the night, we roamed around Bangkok, shopping the street vendors. We ended up having a bite to eat at a restaurant on the sidewalk. Literally, it was a cart on the street cooking food with several plastic tables and chairs. It was odd, but the food was exceptional. Afterwards, bed.

Friday the 10th: Instead of attending the last day of the conference, Kelly and I decided it wasn't worth going to. We had already met with the sellers that we wanted to see and thought it would be more worth while to shop the streets for products. Over half of the sellers at the conference was selling products/services that didn't exactly fit into our market. Most were selling high-end gorgeous hotel rooms or services around Thailand. Our market is definitely more budget conscious looking for that off the beaten path trip, not a luxury honeymoon sweet. Although, we are attracting more of that market. Nonetheless, we had a adventure of our own trekking through the side streets of Bangkok. We opted for Koh Son Road to shop. Kelly had been there before and knew it was a good place to go. We found a great little shop selling wood jewelry. We bought several earrings and hair accessories for the store. All made by Thai artisans. It was so fun to walk through the streets, not knowing where your going and come upon a little hidden treasure amongst the chaos. We had to wait for the receipt to be written up, so we went and had a oil massage and 9 step facial. Each service was an hour and a total of 400 baht. This literally equaled to about 12 US dollars. It is crazy how inexpensive everything is here. I remember getting dinner that night for 30 baht. That's not even a dollar. It was starting to get late by this time. We took a tuk-tuk home and called it a night. FYI: My favorite part about Thailand has been riding a Tuk-Tuk. I mean I think I'm going to die every time we switch lanes or turn a corner, because the drivers look about 10 and are just absolutely crazy. But, goooossshhh I love the thrill.

Saturday the 11th: We had to wake up at 4am to get to the airport. Not exactly what I would like to do on my first Saturday in Bangkok, however I didn't complain since we were traveling to the Eastern most part of Thailand. This was the start to our post-tour. The post-tour was free put on by a travel company called, Holiday Images. We arrived to the airport about 2 1/2 hours before our flight. No good reason as to why we had to be there soooo early. Torture I guess. We flew into Trat, then took a van, then a ferry to the small island of Koh Chang. It's considered the second largest island in Thailand next to Phuket. Upon our arrival, we had a wonderful, extravagant seafood lunch. It was phenomenal! We then had a little boat ride and visited a local village creating handicrafts out of coconut. The tour guide did a poor job of explaining the purpose and benefits of the sites. It could have gone much better if we knew why they chose those particular sites to visit. This is only one of the many problems we had on our post-tour. We ended the day with a site inspection and dinner hosted by one of the local hotels. Actually, I should mention the hotel we stayed at. They put us up at The Dewa. Right on Koh Chang island. Not kidding….it was probably one of the best hotels I have ever stayed in. As it ended up, it was the only thing I liked about the post-tour. Kelly has even agreed!

Sunday the 12th: Woke up and had no desire to leave the hotel. It was that beautiful! Despite my desire to stay, I couldn't be that upset since we were going Zip ling on the island. An activity I had previously done in Colorado, but was dying to try again. Zip ling was crazy fun, except being bitten by Thai mosquitos several times. After zip lining, we rode in the vans back to the port to catch the ferry. Just a little tid bit, "Chang" in Thai means "elephant". The island was named Koh Chang because part of the island looks like a elephant half immersed into water. Arriving back to Trat, we took a charter bus to Chantaburi. Let me tell you what, I had never seen a charter bus look like the ones we took. Seriously, atrocious. The worst decorating I have ever seen, haha! I have some footage of the inside on the camcorder. It's good stuff. We had lunch at this shady looking place where Kelly and I almost got attacked by 5 dogs. We hate seafood that came from a tank that appeared as if it hadn't been cleaned in 2 years. It was not good, but I went with it. We watched a show at the Oasis aquarium that had pink dolphins. Something I have never seen before. We then drove to the hotel and had a nice dinner.

Monday the 13th: Today could have been much better. Kelly and several others from our tour group had gotten sick throughout the night. Not sure how or why, but all could hardly move. We toured around Chantaburi all morning and learned about their "gem world". I bought a beautiful yellow saffaire ring. Thailand is supposebly known for their yellow saffaires. We had lunch and made the trek back to Bangkok. I have to end this post before my computer dies. Tomorrow we are heading to Isan, to see the various projects and handicrafts established by PDA. I can't wait!! I'll post again as soon as I get internet access.