Well here I am the morning of my second day in Thailand.  The trip over was as usual bone crushingly long, but I got lucky and was upgraded for the long 12 hour portion of the trip from Minneapolis to Tokyo.  Like a child, I was quite happy as the plane was a 747 with the upper deck, which is where I was happily sat.  Its sort of like your own little tree fort - actually in a way, its so removed up there, its almost what I would think a movie set from an airplane movie would look like....an airplane move of the happy type with Leslie Nealson as the captain.  Alas no upgrade on the 6 hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok, but there is this nice Northwest Airlines club lounge in the Tokyo Narita airport, with among other things, this great Asahi beer machine.  You take a nice ice chilled glass out of the glass door fridge next to the machine, place it in the holder below the beer spigot and press start.  The holder then lifts the glass up at the appropriate angle, pours the beer precisely 4/5 full, and then another spout dispenses the perfect amount of foam on top, sort of like a well done late, only cold and. . . .beer.  Actually it would be the perfect solution for the Guinness people who search high and low to find the way to pour the perfect pint of Guinness.  My uncle, who worked for Guinness in Dublin all his life, told me they once came up with this pad that gave off some sort of ultra sonic vibration that you could buy at the store, then pour your can of Guinness in the privacy of your own home, switch on the pad, place the glass on top and the vibration would create the proper and respectful amount of head on the pint.  Of course the potential $500 price tag that would have been necessary to charge for the pad kind of killed the idea, although for some people who really take their Guinness seriously (as any person should), it would have been worth it.  But I digress.  

I arrive at midnight in Bangkok at their shiny new airport, now boasting the world’s tallest control tower.  After the 2 hour taxi trip to our gate (probably a little less than that, but it was long) and then the 2 hour trek from the gate back to customs (I don’t think this was much of an exaggeration including stopping to hydrate and stretch propperly for the long walk), I am through customs and out to the shuttle to the airport Novotel which I can see not more than 300 yards away.  If you can picture a two dots like a colon  : , the top dot in the colon being the airport and the lower dot being the nice shiny new hotel, and then took a pen starting from he airport dot and proceed to aimlessly draw spiraling intersecting circles randomly for a while around the colon until your arm gets tired and then end at the lower dot (the hotel), that is how we made it in the shuttle “directly” from the airport to the hotel 15 minutes later.  Did I mention the hotel was 300 yards away?  Anyway, I check in and head up to the room.  Its actually a very nice place, and I find out that you can walk directly from he hotel to the airport in a matter of minutes, a choice I will go with in the morning.   That next morning I head down for breakfast to the buffet.  Now my wife and I have been known to judge a significant portion of our vacation on a good buffet (good European Muslix and fresh tropical fruit like mangoes scores big points), and this one certainly ranks.   Good breakfast, lots of coffee.  Back to the room.  I then set an all time record the amount of time it takes to start humming that “One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster” song, this morning in the shower.  Usually it starts on the way over on the plane  and never goes away.  Fortunately everyone else on the flight is humming the same thing. Same deal with “I think I’m going to Katmandu” when you are on your way to Katmandu, except with the Katmandu song, I usually end up like a broken record when I get tot he next line in the song  “its what I really really really want to do” and can’t stop repeating the word “really.”  AFter checking out, its back to the airport on foot (which really was a simple 300 yard walk) and flying stand by for the 10.30 am flight to Chiang Mai, our final destination in this leg of the Amazing Race (yes I’m a guilty fan of the show).  I make my way in a taxi to this great little quiet boutique hotel in a nice little windy road neighborhood just blocks from the famed Night Bazaar and the main river and central shopping road.  Its a number of northern Thai style houses all centered around a nice little pool and elevated restaurant with beautiful palms and long Japanese style pools and softly gurgling water features in large ceramic pots, complete with overflowing orchids in pots and fresh cut flowers.  I dump my bags, go out to the street and walk to my little motorbike rental place in this small green space under a large canopied tree, get my scooter and head off to my first meeting at a ceramics workshop.  To tell you the truth, the first meeting was a little disappointing as far as finding product goes, nothing too interesting, but they are not the main people I work with here.  They are really just someone I go to see if they have anything unusual that would be nice to add to the ceramics we carry.  But the big ceramics meeting with the people we spend most of our time with is tomorrow.  That is when I go and sit down with the owner and the ceramists and start designing pieces and going over our collection, so its really not a big deal that this first place is a bit of a bust.  

In the evening, I head off to this great (and expensive) hotel on the river in Chiang Mai called the Chedi.  I think the rooms start at $400 a night on hotels.com and go up from there.  But the nice thing about dining in Thailand is even in the most expensive hotels, the 5 star restaurants that they have in them are quite reasonable (relative to what you might expect from he cost of the room).  So surrounded by this beautiful hotel on the river, all done in modern Asian style in a combination of teak, polished concrete, water and natural stone, I enjoy a great Northern Thai dinner watching the rowers going up and down the river in front of me.  Then its off to the night market to see what all the little antique vendors have to offer.  Some of them I have known for a while, so we spend wome time catching up on life.  I am able to find some nice pieces: Buddhas, Lao, Hmong and Southern Chinese tribal pieces, architectural things and so on.  Nothing bought yet, but a number of things set aside.

Fortunately in he world of jet lag, I am staying awake pretty long for the first day - its 9pm and I have not fallen asleep while walking.  The longer you can stay up on your first night, the better I find my battle with jet lag goes for the rest of the trip.  Back to the hotel after a  good first night of exploring what my potential buys will be.    Tomorrow its off to the my friends at the ceramics place to spend the day working on things, then a meeting with my shipper later in the day to go over some “issues” , and then back to the Night Bazaar in the evening to make some final choices.  Now its bed time.