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Thailand – Day 1 (Oops!)

Today was the second part of my travel experience from Europe to Asia. I sat around at BKK and read my book and looked at memes for about 5 hours before I got on my flight to Chiang Mai. Once in Chiang Mai it was easy enough to get to the hotel and check in. I walked down the street to update my pickup schedule with Elephant Nature Park for Saturday, and then walked around a bit before getting some noodles to eat and petting a cat that lives at a salon. Then I went and got a $7 one hour foot massage at a place around the corner from the hotel, then went to lay down for a couple hours. Unfortunately my alarm didn’t go off to wake me up at 7pm (for some reason even though the clock has updated for Thai time all the apps are still set to European time??) so I slept until about 9:30pm and there went the day! Now it’s almost 1am and I can’t sleep -_- Jet lag is a bitch! Good thing I decided to keep tomorrow, or today rather, a blank slate. I had a feeling this was going to happen…

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Off to Thailand!

No real journal entry for today since it was basically getting up and out for a 10.5 hour flight to Bangkok and with the time change it’s already 7:30am here so I lost an entire day to the void that is created by timezones 😂 I’m sitting at BKK in Bangkok and was in dire need of a pick me up so I went to Starbucks for the largest available mocha espresso. The guy asked my name and I told him Chrystine, and he just looked at me like “wtf is your name??” and wrote this on the cup. Anyone know if it’s a Thai version of my name? Stupid American? Overweight White Lady? The lady making the drink knew exactly who to give it to without reading it out loud 🤣 Onward to Chiang Mai!

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Vatican City

I woke up super early yet again to walk over to Vatican City and meet my before opening tour group. My sore throat has turned into a flow blown cold, which sucks, but it was a nice day and an easy walk so I dealt with it. Our tour guide was great, and power walked us through the line straight over to the Sistine Chapel. They forbid photos there now, but I probably could have taken 100 of them with just how beautiful that place is (I admit…me and pretty much everyone else in there still snuck a photo or two). Since they cleaned it in the 1980s the colors are so vibrant and lively and light. Michelangelo may have been an asshole but he was one hell of a painter.

After the chapel we made our way through the museums to see the highlight exhibits, including Rafaello’s rooms and some recently opened chambers. Then we made our way to St. Peter’s Basilica and it was starting to get pretty crowded by this point. Honestly I was a little let down by the basilica, for all it touts to be, and despite its size, I’ve seen far more elaborate churches in my travels. That being said, it is HUGE and artifacts are everywhere. You can even go down into the catacombs to see the graves of past Popes and even (supposedly) St. Peter’s tomb. They were doing a little mass off to the side so I sat and watched for a while, then grabbed some souvenirs and caught a couple guards in the original uniforms on alert outside. Then I walked through the main entrance to the city back out to Rome. It was almost 1pm by that point, and my cold really was getting worse, so I decided to grab some ravioli then head back to the hotel for some R&R and to pack for my Thailand flight tomorrow.