Bangkok Part 1: Good morning, Thailand!

By Joe Berk

In October of 2017, Susie and I visited Bangkok.  I had a gig in Singapore and we opted to swing by Thailand on the way home.  It was an awesome visit and I had a lot of fun taking pictures of Bangkok motorcycles, Thai women, a few Thai guys, food, and more. I thought I would rerun that series (with a few updates) for you here on the ExNotes blog.  In as many of these posts as I can, I’ll tell you about the motorcycling scene in Bangkok, too.

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Our first morning in Thailand!   Sue and I were up with the sun and we walked around the block to get a few photos after a great breakfast in the Grand Pullman Hotel.

The evening before was fun.  We arrived at the hotel late at night, and because we had opted to stay on the executive floor, the hotel staff rolled out the red carpet for us.  When we went to the check in counter and told the staff our names, they whisked us up to the top floor, brought us into the executive lounge, poured us each a glass of wine, put several kinds of appetizers in front of us, and seated on us on a comfortable sofa.  Two young Thais basically interviewed Sue and me, they disappeared for a moment, and then they reappeared with our room keys.  It was a pretty cool experience, and it was unlike any hotel check-in we’ve ever had.

That morning we walked around a bit taking in one of the world’s busiest streets in one of the world’s most exotic cities.  The number of motorcycles on every street had our attention immediately.  Something we had not seen before anywhere else in the world were the motorcycle and motorscooter taxis.  People used motorcycles and scooters for taxi duty, as you will see in a few of the photos below.

The fun was just beginning.  I’ve been pretty lucky all of my life and my work has carried me to some pretty exotic locales.  I’ve seen a lot of the world and most of it has been on someone else’s dime.   That’s what this Thailand adventure was.  A client brought me to Singapore to teach a failure analysis course to a group of their defense ministry engineers (I wrote a book about failure analysis a couple of decades ago and it’s been providing adventures like this ever since).   The heavy lift on this trip was the airfare to Singapore (which the client covered); swinging by Bangkok and stopping off there on the way home only cost a bit more.  It’s a great way to travel.  I had my trusty Nikon D3300 with me (I love that camera), and I put it to good use on this trip.

I think I’m going to run this Bangkok series every day starting today and for the next six days to maintain the story’s continuity (there will be seven Bangkok posts in total).  If it’s too much, hey, just check back in when it’s convenient for you.

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