Adventures of a Wandering Thirtysomething

We made it to Thailand! As has become the norm for our travels, it certainly wasn’t without incident.

Nearly every major trip we’ve taken has had an airline incident – changed flights, messed up seating, bitchy airline agents, etc. For this trip, we were absolutely vigilant. We booked United Airlines. We checked our flight schedule constantly: Nashville to Denver, Denver to Tokyo, Tokyo to Bangkok. We double and triple checked our seating assignments. Even as we headed to bed the night before our very early departure, we checked the schedule. Apparently, that still isn’t enough.

When we awoke and checked everything again at 4:30 a.m., the whole flight schedule had been completely changed and had us landing in Bangkok an entire day later. Son of a! Matt called the airline to get the scoop and determined Denver was the culprit that sent everything off course. F-ing Denver! Thankfully, there were several flight options to pick from to get us to Bangkok as originally planned, so we settled on one, called a cab and headed to the airport.

Of course, the trouble didn’t end there. Thanks to the never-ending polar vortex, our re-route failed us too. This time Chicago was the culprit, where all flights into and out of the city were cancelled. My stomach churned with anxiety as the prospect of not being able to get out of Nashville became more real. No United Airlines flights could get us to Bangkok, but wait, Delta Airlines could. Oh, dear Lord, the irony.

(For those who don’t know or remember, our 2012 Denver/Delta Airlines trip goes down in history as one of the all-time biggest travel fails. Read here:
http://www.verheuladventures.com/2012_06_01_archive.html)

But, wouldn’t you know it, six movies, five meals, two naps and many iTunes later, we landed in Bangkok with our bags thanks to good ol’ Delta Airlines. Our 2 a.m. arrival meant just a few hours of sleep before our first official outing in Thailand, so we caught a few winks before setting out on our morning food tour through the streets of Bangkok.

Matt and I are not big on tours. In fact, we avoid them at all costs unless absolutely necessary. But if all tours were like our Bangkok food tour, we’d partake far more often. A quick river ferry ride took us to our meeting spot where we connected with our tour guide, Mod, and four fellow travelers – two from the U.S. and two from Germany. Sweet Mod led us around the neighborhood, giving us some great history and introducing us to several variations of Thai food including Chinese-Thai food, Muslim-Thai food, Royal Thai food and baked goods.

Not a single bite we ate included Pad Thai. To all my American friends and family: I know you love your Pad Thai (as do we), but it’s considered largely a tourist food here. Thais eat variations of it, but what you think of as Pad Thai is generally one heavily Americanized version that merely resembles the real thing. Instead, we were introduced to things like traditional roasted duck, massaman curry, green curry on roti, crispy catfish green mango salad and more. We ate tamarind from a street vendor and deep fried plantains and sweet potatoes coated in sesame seeds from another. Pure food heaven! Matt and I even tried stir-fried cow brains, which weren’t half bad.

As our bellies expanded, so did our confidence. The crazy streets of Bangkok are definitely intimidating and the language barrier is the most challenging of any we’ve encountered, but with every block we walked and every new taste we tried, the city got just a bit smaller and a bit less scary.