ON THE
ROAD AGAIN |
| Flag of Thailand |
After a 5-week stay at
home we are ready to hit the road again. In mid-February we are off on another
foreign trip. We are going to Thailand on another excursion with the small
group tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT).
There are just 15 travelers
on our trip that starts in the capitol Bangkok and travels to the northern
parts of the country, visiting 6 locations over 15 days.
This is our second
trip with OAT. Last year we visited Vietnam and Cambodia with them and it was a
positive experience, enough to sign up with them again.
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
Admittedly, I know
nothing about Thailand other than Bangkok and even that is minimal. We were
more familiar with Vietnam and Cambodia only because we remembered the names from the war. Cities like Hanoi, Danang and Saigon as well as the Mekong Delta were
for a time talked about on the nightly news broadcasts.
Our trip to Thailand
will take us to places like Kanchanaburi, Nakhon Sawan and Sukhothai, not
exactly places readily on our lips, though I’m sure we will be familiar with
all by trip’s end.
We will start out exploring
Bangkok, a massive megacity and the capital of Thailand, for a few days before
exploring the northern parts of the country.
According to the Thai government
Bangkok is the world’s most popular tourist destination, drawing nearly 23 million
visitors in 2023, ahead of Paris and London. We’ve had friends who have visited
the country several times over the years, perhaps drawn by reasonable prices
and great Thai cuisine.
ELEPHANTS AND RAINFORESTS AND THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
Most of the population lives in Bangkok and it is much less crowded throughout the rest of the country. After Bangkok we will visit the floating markets of Kanchanaburi and later the Hellfire
Pass, where the Japanese forced POWs to build a railway through the jungle, and
the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai. We will get to walk to the original bridge
and later take a boat ride down the Kwai. We will go “glamping” in
airconditioned tents at the Hintok River Camp and later help wash elephants at the Ma Sa Elephant care center at
Chiang Mai. Also in Chiang Mai we will visit the "roof of Thailand" at the Doi Inthanon National Park and the cloud forest located there and later in Chiang Rai we get to visit the Golden Triangle where opium was once grown. The government has established many programs and helped introduce alternative crops and pushed tourism over the drug trade. I'm all right with this as long as no one tries to make me a mule.
That’s just a small sample
of what we’re going to see in Thailand, but when our trip with OAT ends, we are
flying to Phuket to stay at a beach resort there for a week. We hope to go on a
scuba dive while there. There is a dive shop at the resort.
To fly there we are heading
east, from Philadelphia all the way to Doha on American Airlines, then boarding
a Qatar Airlines flight to Bangkok.
Yep, we ended last year
needing to take a break from traveling, but that road weariness is always short-lived with
Team VFH.
Thanks for reading.
Safe travels all!
การเดินทางแห่งความรัก
(LIVE TRAVEL LOVE)
© 2025 by Gregory Dunaj
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