Please leave a comment when you visit my blog. Thank you!
Post 1997
- 6 years and 361 days since I started this blog -
- 6 years and 361 days since I started this blog -
It is one week until I leave for Thailand.
I will catch an Uber to Hancock airport around 4am, for a flight to JFK that departs at 5:30am.
There's a two-and-a-half hour layover at JFK, which is okay, because I'll have to go through airport security again (carry-on luggage, different terminal at JFK).
My flight to Guangzhou, China is a little more than fourteen hours long. After a short layover there, I fly directly to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Twenty-seven hours from Syracuse to Chiang Mai is incredibly fast, considering there were no flights from the US to there only six months ago, and that even now, other flights using different stopover airports take between thirty and forty-plus hours, with stopovers that range from eight to twenty hours - almost the length of my whole flight to China. Ahh, modern times.
I've been preparing a bit each day, and have done an insane (by my stay-away-from-malls, shopping isn't fun standard) amount of retail spending. I bought a good, cheap laptop to take instead of my expensive MacBook Pro, then spent a couple of hundred bucks on updates; tropical-weight travel pants; a passport wallet; cloth slip-on walking shoes (Skechers GoWalk 4 Performance, thanks for asking); an early refill on my synthroid medication.
The simple purpose of my trip is to see Chiang Mai, which has been at the top of my list of retirement destinations for years now, and has spent more time in that position than any other place on the planet. A considerable feat, given that I made my first list (Panama was at the top then) twenty-five years ago.
In that regard, early the morning of my first full day in Chiang Mai, I'll be going to a breakfast meeting hosted by the Chiang Mai Expats club. There's no agenda, it's just a time and place for expats to get together and hang. What's it like? No idea. That's what makes it exciting.
I have some other things I want to do: Visit an elephant sanctuary, have a conversation with a Buddhist monk, get a blind massage (the world's only school of massage for blind women is in Chiang Mai), go to the night market, the wet market, and eat, eat, eat.
I'll check out the music scene. I'll visit art museums. I'll go out with no plan, no goal - just to look around. And, most importantly, I'll meet people.
And I will stay loose, flexible, keeping planning to a minimum, open to new ideas, suggestions and experiences. For eighteen whole days (the total trip is three weeks, losing three days to travel). I can do that!
This is the culmination of sixty years of fascination with this part of the world, with Asian culture. Something in The King and I and Anna and the King of Siam started that sixty some years ago. I've wanted to go to Siam/Thailand for that long. I am so grateful to finally be undertaking that journey!
I will catch an Uber to Hancock airport around 4am, for a flight to JFK that departs at 5:30am.
There's a two-and-a-half hour layover at JFK, which is okay, because I'll have to go through airport security again (carry-on luggage, different terminal at JFK).
My flight to Guangzhou, China is a little more than fourteen hours long. After a short layover there, I fly directly to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Twenty-seven hours from Syracuse to Chiang Mai is incredibly fast, considering there were no flights from the US to there only six months ago, and that even now, other flights using different stopover airports take between thirty and forty-plus hours, with stopovers that range from eight to twenty hours - almost the length of my whole flight to China. Ahh, modern times.
I've been preparing a bit each day, and have done an insane (by my stay-away-from-malls, shopping isn't fun standard) amount of retail spending. I bought a good, cheap laptop to take instead of my expensive MacBook Pro, then spent a couple of hundred bucks on updates; tropical-weight travel pants; a passport wallet; cloth slip-on walking shoes (Skechers GoWalk 4 Performance, thanks for asking); an early refill on my synthroid medication.
The simple purpose of my trip is to see Chiang Mai, which has been at the top of my list of retirement destinations for years now, and has spent more time in that position than any other place on the planet. A considerable feat, given that I made my first list (Panama was at the top then) twenty-five years ago.
In that regard, early the morning of my first full day in Chiang Mai, I'll be going to a breakfast meeting hosted by the Chiang Mai Expats club. There's no agenda, it's just a time and place for expats to get together and hang. What's it like? No idea. That's what makes it exciting.
I have some other things I want to do: Visit an elephant sanctuary, have a conversation with a Buddhist monk, get a blind massage (the world's only school of massage for blind women is in Chiang Mai), go to the night market, the wet market, and eat, eat, eat.
I'll check out the music scene. I'll visit art museums. I'll go out with no plan, no goal - just to look around. And, most importantly, I'll meet people.
And I will stay loose, flexible, keeping planning to a minimum, open to new ideas, suggestions and experiences. For eighteen whole days (the total trip is three weeks, losing three days to travel). I can do that!
This is the culmination of sixty years of fascination with this part of the world, with Asian culture. Something in The King and I and Anna and the King of Siam started that sixty some years ago. I've wanted to go to Siam/Thailand for that long. I am so grateful to finally be undertaking that journey!
Food and Diet
Today's Weight: 201.7 lbs.
Previous Weight (12/26/17): 203.7 lbs.
Net Loss/Gain: - 2.0 lbs.
Diet Comment
Yesterday's weight gain looks like an outlier, since most of it came right off. Today should bring me back down to range.
Food Log
Breakfast
1:15pm, at CoreLife Eatery:
Lunch
5:15pm, at CoreLife Eatery:
Dinner
1:45am: Dubliner cheese with walnuts and a Quest bar.
Liquid Intake
1:15pm, at CoreLife Eatery:
 |
| Make-your-own bowl: free-range chicken, kale, mesclun, broccoli, shiitake mushrooms, edamame, cherry tomatoes, ginger, spicy Thai sauce, and chicken bone broth. |
5:15pm, at CoreLife Eatery:
 |
| Chicken Cobb salad (shredded kale and spinach, grilled chicken, avocado, bacon, hard-cooked egg and blue cheese dressing with a little sriracha). Not shown: A Quest bar. |
1:45am: Dubliner cheese with walnuts and a Quest bar.
Liquid Intake
Espressos: 1; Coffee: 0 oz.; Tea: 0 oz.; Water: 72+ oz.; and two shots of Jameson's Irish whiskey
Please leave a comment when you visit my blog. Thank you!
No comments:
Post a Comment