Day 1

Day 1
We have always wanted to go to Thailand and knew we’d be sad if we didn’t get to go while we are in Guam. We began planning the trip several times, but stopped and decided not to spend the money. Finally, the week before Thanksgiving we decided to go ahead and spend our Thanksgiving in Thailand. Luckily, things came together and we were able to finalize our travel plans for Bangkok.

We started our trip very early in the morning. Our flight left at 6am, so we had to get up at 3:00am! We left Guam and flew about 3.5 hours to Manilla in the Philippines. We didn’t see much there other than the airport, but just being there was exciting as we know many people in Guam from the Philippines. We had about a 2 hour layover and then flew another 3 hours and arrived in Bangkok. After standing in a REALLY long customs line, we found the representative from our hotel and took a van to the hotel. The van driver was so cute – he was obviously still working on his English and he could communicate basically, but made us laugh with his pronunciations of some things.

After an interesting drive through downtown Bangok, we arrived at the Amari Watergate Hotel. We were amazed at the beauty of it. It’s in the midst of the busy, dirty city, but it feels like a fancy resort inside. The people who work here are just so nice and helpful – the service is amazing! Our room was beautiful and the pool was just gorgeous! It was on the 8th floor, so it felt like a roof top pool – they had tons of white lights on the trees and bushes which was really pretty.

There is a 3 hour time difference here, so at 5:00pm, we were all starving since it was 8:00pm our time. We went to the Promenade for our Thanksgiving dinner. There are several other specialty restaurants in the hotel, but they didn’t open until 6:00 and we didn’t want to wait! They do not celebrate Thanksgiving here – we have mentioned it to several people who have no idea what we are talking about. So…. there was no turkey and dressing for us! Kelsey and Jason had Asian dishes, I had a cheeseburger and Adysen and Allie had chicken strips and French fries…. Definitely not the usual Thanksgiving dinner!  We all did share things that we are thankful for, though!!

After dinner, Jason took the girls the pool while Kelsey and I used the internet connection in the lobby. We all were exhausted and were sound asleep in bed by 8:45. The bad news is that the girls got up at 5:30am, though, as it was 8:30am to them!! Hopefully we’ll get our selves more oriented to the time difference tomorrow.