Oh, how I love traffic

Photo credit: trekearth.com

If anyone has noticed my absence, I haven't died, or am lying in bed with a bout of malaria, or, as of now, busy!

You were wondering about that, right?

I haven't blogged in a week because we went out of town.  And, wow, what a trip!  There was a conference that our friends were going to in Bangkok, so we tagged along!

We started Monday with a 8 1/2 hour trip that turned into a 12 1/2 hour trip.  You know how that goes.

At the end of the day, we were doing just fine; cruising, and rejoicing as we entered the wild concrete jungle of the big city.  The kids weren't going insane yet, I was feeling better from my sickness that hit the day before, and our car hadn't blown up yet.  Things were going well.

We passed over a massive suspension bridge, and I remember saying that I suddenly felt so so small. We are country bumpkins now, I'm afraid, and things like passing over gigantic bridges in the middle of a gigantic river in a gigantic city (11+ million people!) can make you feel like a that.  (As a side note...we were in the mall yesterday, walking through an ultra-chic home department store, and the kids and I confirmed ourselves to be quirky, small-town people as we laid down on an uber-comfy floor rug. The kids ooh-ed and aah-ed and we all remarked at how soft the fibers were.  Treavor tried to act like he didn't know us, as he was quite embarrassed.  Moving on...) 

We passed over said suspension bridge and continued to try our best to decipher the three maps of Bangkok's downtown city streets - while noting highway signs and praying that we wouldn't miss a turn.  We had heard that if you miss a turn of the expressway, which we were barreling down at this point, that you would quickly regret it as u-turning is quite impossible and quite laborious. 

Well, what did we do, you ask?

We missed our turn, of course.

20-minutes later, we managed to turn ourselves back around to retrace our steps back to the fork we missed.  There was no fork.  There was no turn option.  We were livid.  And tired.  And...it was raining.  And, it was dark!  Recipe = disaster.

We tried the non-expressway option and tried to work our way to our hotel on the congested city streets, trying to manage not to lose our minds.  We normally reside in a two-stoplight town, people - this was a challenge!

Two hours later, we gave up.  We went to McDonald's (cue "Hallelujah music").  We got some directions.  And, we finally managed to make it to our destination.  Praise. God.

The conference was great!  Thursday, we successfully made it back out of the city, and are now on....

...VACATION!

I don't know if I will blog any more until we get home...I will be working on my tan, working on regaining my sanity from "life" and trying not to work very hard at anything else!

Got any fun travelling stories?  Do tell...Comment below.