สวัสดี!
(Hello in Thai, pronounced “sawadee”)

Sorry it has been so quiet around here for a few months. We’ve been crazy busy with preparations for the move. We sold a lot of our belongings in Philadelphia. Packed what we wanted to store for a few years in boxes. Packed what we wanted to bring to Thailand in suitcases (Halie and I each had two rolling suitcases, a duffel bag and a backpack). Then we moved out of our Philly rowhome and spent a few days driving to Texas. We had four weeks in Texas to spend some time with our families, go on a quick vacation to Mexico, finalize last minute documents for visas and prepare for the big move. Finally, a month and a day ago, we loaded up on a Korean Air flight and headed across the world. One day later, July 23rd, we were in our new home: Bangkok (or in Thai: Krung Thep).

It has now been a month. We’ve moved into a condo downtown. I’ve set up my desk area at home for work. Halie has two coworkers that she shares a cab with every morning and evening for work. Next week the Thai tutor we hired will begin seriously teaching us the language. We are finally settling in to our new lives as farangs in Thailand.

So what does that mean, our new lives in Thailand? Well, we get up really early because Halie’s school is out in the suburbs and we live downtown. We walk to the end of our “soi” so Halie can grab a taxi for school and I can grab breakfast. This lady makes these incredible crispy pancake things with sugar and condensed milk on them. And they’re only 5 baht (15 cents)!! I start off every day with at least two. If I need to grab some water or cokes for the house, I go across the soi to another little shop for that. My walk back brings me across food stands selling prepared lunches and whole fish off a grill, past monks receiving donations from the devoted, fruit and vegetable stands and many other shops. All the while I’m dodging taxis, bikes, motorcycles, soi dogs and other vehicles. What a way to start every day!

In the afternoons we sometimes will meet other teachers for happy hour or dinner. We use the foodpanda app to order dinner some nights. Other nights we either walk to a restaurant or pick up dinner from a food stand. There’s one particular stand on our soi that for only 35 baht (a little over a dollar) you can get rice with two different dishes on top. My favorite Thai dish currently is the minced pork stir fried with basil and peppers, called pad kra pao. It’s so tasty and spicy and also good with chicken.

And of course, the weekends. This is when we really get to explore the city (or attempt to, it’s so freaking huge). The major road we live off of, Sukhumvit, is a perfect place to begin. One reason is because the BTS sky train is on Sukhumvit so using that (and it’s connection to the Airport link and the metro), we can reach much of the city. Sukhumvit is a shopper’s paradise. Everything from fancy, stupid-expensive malls to street markets line Sukhumvit from one end to the other. This is also a large expat area so any type of food at any price is just a few kilometers away. You can get anything you want and pay anywhere from 35 baht to 3500 baht (if you prefer). Farther down the BTS is also numerous Buddhist temples (called wats), cultural landmarks like the Victory Monument and museums aplenty. Many nights, we end up at a rooftop bar because they’re incredible for viewing the night skyline, there are so many of them and… we like bars.

Day trips are also easily accomplished on weekends. We recently took a trip to Ayutthaya, the capital of Bangkok from 1350 until it was burned down by the Burmese in 1787. It’s a great collection of ruins of temples, stupas, royal buildings and much more. We also visited the current royal summer palace at Bang Pa-In then finished the day off with a riverboat cruise back to Bangkok. Here’s a collection of a few pictures I took that day. 

Another major reason for living in Bangkok is our close connection to the rest of Southeast Asia. Suvarnabhumi Airport is a major international hub with cheap flights all over SEA and the world. A second airport, Don Mueang, will get you places even cheaper. As we get settled in, we’ve been planning our trips around holidays and long weekends. In September, we have flights up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. With a week off in October, we’re planning on spending most of it in Vietnam. October also has a three-day weekend that we want to go to one of the numerous islands along the Thai coast that contain some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

Anyway, I’m not completely sure what I was trying to accomplish with the blog post. I just felt obligated to give you guys an update and felt bad about not posting anything for a while. Hope you enjoyed my update and I’ll make sure to include more pictures next time. If you want to see pictures more often, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat. I’ll post something somewhere…

Until next time!