We are a family of five that decided to leave our normal lives behind and travel around the world for 180 days. Joey and I are both physicians back home in Lexington, KY and our kids are Wilson (a smart, funny, pragmatic 14 year old who approaches life with the wisdom of an 80 year old and the mischievous grin of someone who gets the inside joke), Bailey (an opinionated, strong-willed, compassionate 12 year old who never misses anything and may rule the world someday), and Gus (an energetic, passionate 9 year old who lives every second of his waking life with everything he has and would give the shirt off his back to ease the suffering of an earthworm). We love traveling, trying new things, meeting awesome people, eating good food, and adventure sports. In this blog, we will be sharing the stories of the places we experience along the way. We will share our successes and our failures in hopes that this is inspiring, helpful, and entertaining to our friends, family, and anyone else who happens to discover us. For more on why we decided to do this, see our blog post on “Traveling is my favorite thing”. Read More About Our Philosophy.
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Visit Thailand Now! Bangkok post COVID
If you have ever considered visiting Thailand, go now! Over the last couple decades, Thailand has become a hot spot for tourism. From backpackers looking for bustling streets lined with clubs, vendors, and street food carts to families in search of pristine beaches, Thailand has drawn some major crowds. Although Thailand was one of the first (and still one of the only) Asian countries open to tourists, the mountains of red tape one has to jump through to get there and the ever-present mental threat of testing positive for COVID and getting stuck in a foreign country has kept the tourists away. This fact had a profound impact on our experience as tourists in Thailand. Aside from a small scattering of Europeans at our hotel in Bangkok, we saw almost zero western tourists during our time there. This had several downstream effects, some good and some bad.
The Trials of Transportation in Thailand
One of the most alien things about Bangkok is the transportation. A foriegn license won’t cut it here, so anyone coming here must stick to walking or having someone else drive you. The city has a very large amount of foot traffic, but is the least pedestrian friendly place I have been. For one, it is always hot here. It is also a truly magical city, as the sidewalk will just randomly disappear.
When it comes to driving, you may see two differences between our roads and theirs. First of all, you will see more motorcycles here than you have ever seen before, and you won’t just see them on the roads, but the sidewalks too. It is a good sign that the sidewalk is about to disappear when an unfazed motorcyclist almost hits you. Though it seems, not just legal, but also completely normal for motorcycles to drive on sidewalks.
The Sun Rising over Kauai from Poipu Beach. January 23rd, 2022