still hot in Bangkok

I took the bus from Hua Hin to Bangkok yesterday. I'd been emailing Talis, the 18-year-old who had joined us on the trek in Nepal, and knew that he was in Bangkok and was in the same part of town I was headed for, and ran into him right away. Not too big of a coincidence since he was staying in a hotel only a few doors down from where I'd been before, and had left my box of stuff. So that was great to see him again, he invited me to stay in his room for the night since he had a double room, then was leaving early this morning, headed for Ko Chang (the one near Cambodia) and the island of Ko Mak and Ko Kood that I had visited back in the fall. We hung out yesterday evening along with assorted friends of his he'd made while in Bangkok the past week or so, then he took off this morning. I got him to send me some more of the photos from the trek, so I'll include those in another post.

So I have two full days left to hang out here in Bangkok and not a whole lot to do. I probably would have stayed in Hua Hin an extra day and enjoyed the cooler weather and the beach there, except that I knew Talis would be taking off soon and wanted to connect with him. It's hot and sweaty here in Bangkok as usual (although I guess it's me that's sweaty, not Bangkok itself), so I'm sure Hawaii will be a nice, somewhat subtle change from here, since it doesn't get quite so extremely hot there. My main job here is just to unpack that compact box of stuff and reorganize my belongings into one carry-on, plus two checked bags that won't be too heavy to take on the plane, which should work out okay. Then I'm on the plane early Thursday morning, for a relatively short couple of flights to Hawaii, about 12 hours of flight time with an hour-and-a-half layover in Taipei, Taiwan. That probably doesn't sound so quick, but it beats the usual 24 hours of flying plus 8-12 hours of layovers that it takes flying straight from the west coast to India. So I'll probably be getting online pretty regularly the next couple of days and post another update before I leave Bangkok.