Tag Archives: thailand

Thai Airways

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Thai Airways is the national carrier of Thailand. It serves the route to Thailand from other countries in Asia, as well as from countries in Europe and North America. It is part of the Star Alliance, so it has codeshare route agreement with many international airlines including United Airlines.

We flew Thai Airways for the first leg of our Southeast Asia trip from Jakarta to Bangkok. A low-cost carrier called Air Asia is a popular choice to travel in the region, but we decided to go on Thai Airways since it had better itinerary and because I could earn United Airlines Mileage Plus points for the trip.

The short 3.5-hour trip was pretty enjoyable. They had pretty good in-flight service; but what left a lasting impression was the small gesture before we landed to the Suvarnabhumi Airport. They gave each passenger a boutonniere with fresh orchid — the national flower of Thailand.

Thai orchid

Bangkok

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The first city that my cousin Kristi and I visited during our Southeast Asia trip last year was Bangkok, Thailand. We decided to go to Bangkok as our first stop of the trip as it is a hub in Southeast Asia that provided us with more flight options for traveling to the next country in our trip, Cambodia.

In the last twenty years or so, Thailand has become a major tourist destination in Southeast Asia. The city of Bangkok itself has its charm with its palaces and temples, as well as the river and canals (that gave it a nickname ‘Venice of the East’). Many westerners (from Europe and America) come to Thailand also to visit its pristine beaches (Phuket, Ko Samui, Pattaya) and mountainous region (Chiang Mai). It is also rich culturally and historically, being the only country in Southeast Asia that was never colonized.

When we were planning our trip, we knew Bangkok was the most convenient gateway city to come into Thailand from Indonesia. We did consider visiting other parts of Thailand (particularly Chiang Mai in the north), but after considering the time that we had available, we decided to visit only Bangkok for this trip and leave the other places in Thailand for future trip when we can spend more time in this country.

Kristi had been to Bangkok before with her friends, but her experience before was limited mostly to accompany her friends shopping. For some, Bangkok is a choice destination for shopping as you can get some goods (garments, electronics) for lower price than elsewhere. In this trip, we decided to focus our time exploring the cultural aspect of the city, so it’s also a new experience for Kristi.

The photo below was taken at the Grand Palace in Bangkok. The stupas, spires, and statues are very distinct and recognizable landmarks in the city.

Grand Palace

Southeast Asia

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I spent this New Year at home — a low key one. But to start the new year for this blog, I thought I would begin with a series of posts based on my trip last year around the New Year’s Day to several Southeast Asian countries.

This trip started initially with an idea to go to Australia to visit my cousin who was studying in Melbourne. I was planning on going home to Indonesia, and I thought it would be nice to piggy back on that trip with ‘a trip within the trip’ to go somewhere near Indonesia. Well, the Australia trip ended up not working out, so I had to look for an alternative. The timing was at the end of December and beginning of January, as that was the time that would work best for my cousin Kristi who would be my traveling partner. We looked at several ideas: New Zealand (too expensive), China (too cold), and Japan (both too expensive and cold). Then we started thinking about where we would like to celebrate the New Year’s Day to make it memorable (with the original Australia trip, we were thinking about being in Sydney for the end of the year). One place came up to mind: Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Neither of us had been to Cambodia, it’s close to Indonesia, it’s relatively cheaper to travel there, and the weather should be pretty good at the end of December.

So that was the ‘anchor’ for the plan — New Year’s Day at Angkor Wat. Then we started building an itinerary around it. We thought of going for two weeks, so we started thinking about places in Cambodia and nearby countries that we would like to visit and the one that Kristi had not been before. I had never been to any of these countries, so any place we pick would be new to me.

Finally we settled on the following itinerary: starting with a couple of days in Bangkok, Thailand, then continued to Cambodia with visits to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (timed to be in Siem Reap for the New Year’s Day), then continued to Northern Vietnam with visits to the capital city of Hanoi, the mountain region of Sapa, and the famous Ha Long Bay, and finally ending with short stop in Singapore. So this series of posts will follow this trip and I will highlight places we visited and some unique travel experience from this trip.

The photo below was taken on the New Year’s Day at Angkor Wat near Siem Reap, Cambodia. We decided to skip the New Year’s Eve celebration and went to bed early so we could get up early in the morning and experience the first sunrise of 2011 at Angkor Wat. So there it was… the most memorable New Year’s Day morning in my life to date.

First sunrise of the year