Not much to talk about – writing about laying on a beach surrounded by touts begging for business and fat Euros sunning themselves is almost as boring as reading about it.

But I have been emailing recently with a friend about doing a “travel journal.” But that’s what this is, right?

Well, sorta. Let me explain.
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A generous friend has given me and the Financial and Menu Advisor use of their timeshare, and since they belong to something that seems to be a timeshare exchange, we seem to be in Pattaya, a sunny resort southeast of Bangkok.

At first, the unbelievable volumes of overweight white Euro men with lithe young Thai things (both boy-things and girl-things, it’s hard to tell here) were a bit intimidating. But convinced that the place we were staying in had to have some authentic Thai culture, it being in Thailand, I’ve committed myself to the hunt.
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The Financial and Menu Advisor and I woke early and took the ridiculously misnamed water taxi down to Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn. Apparently, if you get there right at 7:30, when it opens, the entire structure gleams with the morning light in such a spiritual and epiphanic way that it will change your life.

And your socks, too.
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This morning, as I dodged tuk-tuk drivers bolting through intersections, I came to a realization.

It was not 11:15 a.m.

It was 10:15.

Gaining an extra an hour to repack my meager belongings that will accompany me for the next nine months was a nice after-breakfast mint, but it suddenly dawned on me that I had been waking up at 3:30 in the morning, not four, and that my entire life since arriving here has been more rushed than it needed to be.

This changed, as Rick Moranis said in Spaceballs, absolutely nothing.
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After talking about this mad, mad trip for nearly a year and a half, it’s finally happening.

Or, as my parents would want me to tell them, “After an uneventful flight on an airline with a somewhat dubious safety record, I’m safe and in Bangkok.”
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