This is Thailand

Our friends working in China have a "This is China" segment in their newsletters once in a while about the weird and wondrous things about China. Well I'd thought I'd add a "This is Thailand" segment. Now why do you think this truck is parked on the side of a major highway up to Chiang Mai? I'll let people guess for a couple of days before providing the answer (please leave your guesses in the comments section). A correct guess will win you a free ticket from Bangkok to Phuket (just kidding! But Air Asia were providing 1 million free airline tickets to many destinations if you booked this week and travel 5 Jan 2010 to 30 Apr 2010 - you just pay taxes)

Stuck in Bangkok Traffic! Urrrrrhhhh!

We flew down to Bangkok on Wednesday (AirAsia of course) to apply for our daughter's passport and renew our visas and my work permit. It is a trip our whole family has to make once a year. I took our younger son with me to the Australian Embassy after we landed. Unfortunately, I needed my original marriage certificate without which they wouldn't process the application! Doohhh! So the next morning I left the guesthouse at 9:30am to get to the Australian Embassy and then meet the rest of the family at immigration at 11am. The journey takes about 1 hour normally in traffic. However, this day was no normal day. 2 hours and 15 minutes! At one point we went about 200 metres in 20 minutes! In the middle of the journey the taxi driver stopped and got out of the car and went somewhere just after a toll plaza on a huge highway which we were on. I had no idea where he went. I understood when we went past this building.

Yep. Toilet block just after the toll booth in the middle of a 8 lane highway.

Poor Lisa though. She had to go the same route to immigration and she was stuck in the same traffic but with 3 children!

So today, I gave ourselves 2 hours to get to the airport as we were travelling on the same route. What do you know? Only took 50 minutes to the airport (we were travelling in the early afternoon though as opposed to the morning). So an extra hour to kill at the airport.

Anyway, we are back in Lampang now. Very tired. Travelling with 3 young children isn't what I call fun. I don't think we have to travel again until June when we have our OMF Thailand Conference (over 6 hours of driving though!). I'm relieved though. Hopefully in just over 10 days time we will receive our daughter's passport which ends long process of getting her birth certificate translated into English, going to Bangkok to apply for her citzenship by decent, wait for the citzenship papers to arrive. Then going back to Bangkok to apply for her passport. It has taken almost 6 months!