A new adventure

สวัสดี dear ones,

After a long, long time there is another post from me on this wonderful platform. This time from Thailand. I will spend a few weeks here with my boyfriend (Julian) and generally travel through Southeast Asia for six months. At least that's the plan. However, we didn't really plan anything because we decided to stay as spontaneous as possible. Let's see if that's such a good idea.

Oh well. Our trip to Thailand began on January 7th, 2024 in Germany. After a tearful farewell to our families (especially Grandma Giesela, who had the hardest time saying goodbye) and friends who came to the train station especially, we hopped on the train to Frankfurt. Frankfurt in itself is an absolute experience, although not necessarily recommended. My dad always affectionately calls the city “Junkfurt,” which probably hits the nail on the head. How anyone can conscientiously raise their children here is a complete mystery to me. After a night at the Moxy Hotel at the airport, our flight left the next day. An 8-hour flight from Frankfurt to Delhi in India awaited us. The flight was a little tiring because we had some children on the plane who were probably not as enthusiastic about flying as their parents. Well, after that they probably weren't anymore. In Delhi we had a wait of 5 hours, during which our jet lag became noticeable for the first time. So we wobbled across the airport to our gate like exhausted ice cream cones, barely exchanging a word with each other because of our tiredness. On the way to our gate, we saw several street dogs and so many scooters out of the huge airport windows that I probably wouldn't have been able to count in 30 years. Funnily enough, we met a woman from beautiful Swabia at our gate, which we overheard by chance while she was chatting with her companion. Of course we had to talk to her directly about it and she told us that she came from near Ulm. Simply wonderful. From Delhi our flight continued to Bangkok. When we got there we were initially overwhelmed by the hot wall that awaited us there. We left Germany with -2° outside temperature in a good regatta flow sweater and were therefore literally crushed by the crisp 29° in Bangkok. After we had gotten rid of some of our clothes and were happy that our backpacks had arrived safely with us in Thailand, we ordered a GrapCar via the Grap app, which is a great way to get through Bangkok. The drivers are there within 5-6 minutes and drive you practically through the entire city for the equivalent of 4-5 euros. The drive to our first Airbnb was fabulous as our GrapCar driver immediately gave us some tips and suggestions on what to see in Bangkok. A great guy. In our Airbnb we were greeted by 5 super cute cats. When I booked the Airbnb, I already knew there was a cat living there because it was in some of the pictures and our host had already written to me about it. However, the fact that there were 5 pieces was a great surprise. We left our own two cats (Mango and Kiwi) at home with a heavy heart, so we were all the happier that so many of these little fluffy creatures now lived in our accommodation. Despite being tired, our curiosity won out, which is why we set off again to explore the surroundings. We found a night market just a few hundred meters away. Impressed by the many lights, people, noises and loud music everywhere, we wandered around the crowded market while being constantly chatted up as everyone offered us a taxi ride, a fake branded bag or something to eat. At the beginning, Julian always got involved in short conversations, but he gave up relatively quickly, as conversations in such cases usually do little to help escape these situations. With the schnitzel ready and well-fed, we dragged ourselves back to our Airbnb late at night, took a shower, sent a quick update to our families and went to sleep... excited for the next few days.