Ice Cream, Down Comforters and the New Year

Please Stand Aside
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We initially thought Thailand would be as confounding as India. The airport was beautiful, but the visa process was absurd. The signs were in Thainglish and no one seemed to know what visa who needed. We wrestled with the question for an hour before Magda got so mad she almost flew back to Kolkata. But when we finally arrived at our hotel, a place we'd decided to splurge on, we started to feel better about the Thais. It was New Years eve, and we wanted to treat ourselves for the holiday and to recover a bit from the hard road we'd been traveling. Also our friends Ola and Marciej were joining us from Poland to travel South East Asia together and we knew the schedule ahead would be grueling. The hotel bed was the best thing I've ever touched. Down heaven. Spotless white sheets. So soft. A toilet that you could sit on, and flush! A novelty and an incredible level of comfort. After relaxing for a bit, we walked the slightly crowded but fantastically clean streets and marveled at the clean, neat, rich looking restaurants. We passed about six starbucks' and fought the urge for a homesick latte . We did hop into a haagen-daz though and had a scoop of Belgian chocolate for me and mango sorbet for Magda. Luxury? Are you kidding? Bangkok makes New York look like a banana republic and makes India... well, let's just say the Indians could take a page out of Thailand's book. It was heavenly. I had a spring in my step and chocolate ice cream in my overgrown mustache. Magda had PTSD though and it took several beers to put her in a holiday mood. We rang in the new year with a few thousand Thais and a handful of drunken Germans, then returned to the soft comfort of our hotel for a blissful nights sleep in unaffordable luxury.