Andy Chatman’s Thailand Adventure

Welcome to my travel log for my upcoming 17-day trip to Thailand. I will use this space to share my adventures in both words and photos.

I have never been to SE Asia. I will be spending most or all of my trip in Thailand visiting my cousin Mike. I’ll have an opportunity to see many areas of the country including Bangkok, Chang Mai, Pattaya, Hua Hin and Koh Samui.

I’m travelling on Cathay Pacific (thanks Marc for the bday present) out of NYC-Kennedy through Hong Kong. I’ll fly Air Asia to Chang Mai in the north (I took advantage of their free airfare giveaway to encourage tourism after the civil unrest a couple months ago). Travel plans to Koh Samui and any other side trips will be made when I’m there.

I’ll be experiencing a lot over the 17 days: tourism and photography, jungle adventures including a tree canopy zip line tour, beach and scuba, boating on my cousin’s yacht, elephant rides, thai cuisine, and even one of my life-list items — holding a monkey .

I had to be immunized against Hepatitis-A. If I decide to make a side trip to the Temple Complex at Angkor Wat in Cambodia I may have to deal with a malaria risk. We’ll see about that one — not sure how many temples I want to tour while I’m there and there are plenty of them in Thailand.

Check back here during the first half of February. I’ll be reporting in with stories and photos when possible. I’ve already made some connections with photographers living in Thailand and hope to join them to get some great shots.

A lot to do work-wise before I leave, but I’m starting to slowly make lists for packing.

Here’s a link to the Zip Line Tour I’m going to take in the jungle in Chang Mai.

http://www.treetopasia.com/

If I didn’t have so much work to do all I’d be thinking about is this trip. I’ve started packing, but very slowly.

The first 3 days of my trip, according to the long range forecast, wil be 93F and sunny with zero chance of rain. Nighttime lows around 70F. that doesn’t suck!

I still have to figure out the power situation — do I need convertors, transformers, ??? Not sure. I had my Blackberry turned on for a one-month International plan. While I’ll have phone access for an emergency, it’s $2/minute. But email and web on the phone is unlimited and texts are very inexpensive, so I’ll be able to communicate that way.

My brother told me that Ray Johns, the US Airforce General who flies my cousin’s entry every year in the Top Gun R/C Airplane Competition, will be in Bangkok for the last few days of my visit. I’m psyched, it will be good to see Ray again.

I’ll try to post once more as I’m leaving, then as possible from Thailand. Hope to hear from you in the comments! Andy

Well at least the start of my trip is going to be weather-perfect!

This will be my last pre-trip entry. This afternoon I leave for NYC, and after spending a night having dinner with my Aunt and stopping in to see my nieces and nephew, I leave Tuesday morning for Thailand! Wow!!

It mostly hasn’t sunk in yet — I’ve been on an incredible deadline and just finished my work at 2AM (how was the Super Bowl? I missed it). I have one more small piece of work to do now, then I’ll have a few hours to pack.

Kevin Pickhardt lent me his noise cancelling headphones for the plane trip. I’ve never used them but he swears by them on his trips to New Zealand.

For those who are inclined to visit this blog while I’m away, I’ll do my best to post messages and especially photos when I have access. I’ll have email access some of the time too, and text messaging when I’m in range of a signal.

So that’s it! I hope everyone I know has a wonderful few weeks. See you all soon. Andy