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It's not exactly easy to get from China to India since they're not good friends. In fact, there was no direct flight to where we needed to go. But India was the next stop on the map for us and due to the short trekking season in the Himalayas, we needed to get ourselves there sooner rather than later. So we flew from Guilin to Bangkok and booked onward travel through Kathmandu, Nepal. From Kathmandu, we planned to travel overland to India. We were a little wary about traveling through Nepal with the Maoist troubles and all but the government had declared a three month ceasefire with the rebels so we said what the heck.

This was a third time in Bangkok so we were relieved to be in a familiar city. And since we often write about the horrors of transportation, we must say that our flight on Bangkok Airways was the best flight either of us had ever taken. Bangkok Airways is a small boutique airline with a flight attendant to passenger ratio of something like 3:1. As for airline food, no funny quips to add here either. Brian had roast duck and I had smoked trout and we washed it down with some very drinkable complementary wine. We were well aware that this idyllic travel experience was a very rare thing and were determined to make it last, but eventually once we landed most of the ground crew and a few flight attendants were able to pry our fingers off the seats long enough to get us off the plane.

The last time we were in Bangkok (during our honeymoon), we stayed at the Peninsula--a five star hotel regularly named as one of the best in the world. This time around, we decided to check into a place on Khao San Road-- made famous in the book "The Beach" and home to the best backpacker dives around. Khao San Road is everything that's embarrassing about westerners on vacation. While the Thai people prefer modesty and are hesitant to even wear short pants in public, raging backpackers stumble shirtless and drunk either on their way to the islands or just back from them.  Different experiences but fun nonetheless. Amongst the dreads and fish bowl drinks, a ton of cheap travel agencies line Khao San Road which is the real reason we were here (although getting drunk on questionable booze for 25 cents did sound awfully appealing...)

While we were in Bangkok, we decided to also take advantage of the cheap Thai massages. After a couple months of sleeping on a really hard surfaces, our bodies were begging for some relief. So we went off to the famous Wat Pho massage school where we got two hour massages for something ridiculous like $5. After our bodies were jiggly like jello, we took some time to visit some of the city's great temples including the world's largest reclining Buddha.  One errand we had to run was to pick up some malaria treatment since the next few months we'll be in potentially hazardous areas, so we dropped by a local hospital to get a prescription. An hour and a half later we walked out with our medication in hand, total cost: $23. Somebody let the U.S. in on that one please.

After a few days of stuffing ourselves with delicious pad thai and genuinely good street food, we headed to the airport for our flight on Royal Nepal Airlines.

Photos / videos of "For a fistful of baht":