We have Arrived!

Bangkok, Jan. 8/10
Hello to everyone and welcome as we take you along on our travels through Southeast Asia to the countries of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. This blog will be our version of "Don't Forget Your Passport" as we share our impressions of the sights, tastes and sounds of this part of the world.
Our blog will be a public journal/diary of the things that we will experience during the next three months. We are not professional journalists, nor did we get straight A's in creative writing but hopefully, this will provide some entertainment for you and a record for us as you follow our travels and adventures.
Travelling to this part of the world is something we have wanted to do for the last several years and finally we are here.
We would like to give thanks to Stephanie for her encouragement in finally getting us to put this trip together, to Bryan for his help in setting up this blog ( Bry, we can't figure out how to get pictures into our blog yet!!),
to Trevor and Melissa for their many tips and the loan of their backpack and to Vallry W. for her time in answering our many questions and for her invaluable information which we have brought along with us.
After a long, tiring and uneventful thirty four hours in transit, we finally arrived in Bangkok to a humid 30 degrees while leaving Toronto far behind with it's -13 C. Our flight was smooth and comfortable as we managed to exchange our seats for the exit aisle row with plenty of room for stretching out, standing up and moving around. Who would have thought these seats would be available two hours before take off. Several years ago I learned a lesson from Doug W., that if you don't ask, you don't get and so "I did ask and I got!" which made our flight so much more comfortable.
Bangkok is twelve hours ahead of Toronto time and so the first "problem" we are contending with is the jet lag. As a matter of fact, I am writing this at 3:20 a.m while my body is thinking that it is 3:20 p.m. I am sure that it will take the next few days to adjust.
One of the things that Ross and I enjoy most about travelling is the people we meet. Although we have only been gone two days, we will remember the very humourous 75 year old gentleman from Sault St. Marie who shared the Toronto airport shuttle with us at 4:45 a.m. He was about to embark on a 116 day "Around the World" cruise on the "Geritol" cruise ship for $40,000!!!! In Bangkok, we stood in the immigration line and chatted with a very "well heeled" lady ( her words, not mine) from Dallas who was taking her two daughters (who attend the Ivy League college Brown in Providence Rhode Island) on a three week Asian vacation. We have had breakfast with a young woman from Bowmanville who works as a civilian and is on a month long vacation away from the Forces base in Kandahar Afghanistan. Her stories were fascinating. We have chatted with a couple from Birmingham England who have just purchased land and are having a home built in southern Thailand and who would be more than happy to rent it to us once it is completed.
Our first venture out into Bangkok yesterday awakened our senses to all of the sights, sounds, tastes and smells that lie ahead of us over the next several weeks.
There are shrines to dieties with offerings of fruit and burning incense set up on every corner. I was going to insert a picture of the shrine outside of our hotel but you might have to wait a while until I learn how to do it. The scent of lemongrass fills the air as you walk into buildings. The street food stalls which line the sidewalks looking tempting but not just yet and for sure all of  the fried bugs which we saw last night will never pass our lips!!
A walk through the Suan Lum Night Market offered anything that you might want to buy while a stroll down any  Soi (side street) gave you the opportunity to have any type of massage that you might want to have including "Annie's World Famous Soapy Massage". I had to pull Ross away from there!
And yes, it is true that there are hundreds of older Caucasian men with younger Asian ladies. In an effort to curb this, some hotels post signs saying "No Sex Tourists".
Tomorrow is another day and who knows what it will bring, but you will hear about it in our next post. But for now, I am going to try to get some more sleep!
Until next time,
Joan & Ross