Lorre Weidlich -- Hyde Park Foreign Affairs Desk

This is the latest in an on-going series of reports by Hyde Park's well traveled friend and neighbor, Lorre Weidlich.

Outside shrine at the Phitsanulok Wat

I left Bangalore for Thailand, as usual, in the middle of the night. Every international flight out of Bangalore is in the middle of the night. I tried to sleep and failed, as usual. As Lonely Planet says, there are two kinds of people in this world: the kind that can sleep on planes and the kind that cannot. The plane made its way from Bangalore to Bangkok with a stop at Chennai. In the Bangkok airport, I had only a short time to catch my connecting flight to Phitsanulok, and trouble locating it. I was misdirected to the wrong terminal, had to take a taxi to the correct terminal, and then, because I had no change, ended up paying the driver an outrageous amount. Language, I could see, was going to be a bit more of a problem in Thailand than it had been elsewhere.
    Well, I made it -- but my backpack didn't. I had checked it through, not realizing it would have to be cleared through customs in Bangkok. An attendant at the airport in Phitsanulok arranged for it to be sent on a later flight and delivered to my hotel. This was the first of my Thai luggage misadventures.
    At the hotel I slept to recover from the flight, ate brunch, and headed for (where else?) the wat (temple), in a bicycle rickshaw.
    Thailand was the first primarily Buddhist country I had visited, so I had some learning to do.