Tag: Bangkok

Claustrophobia

by pennypostcard • December 8, 2025 • 1 Comment

My accident—the day I was hit by a truck and my life took a hard right turn—was just over three weeks ago. It feels like a lifetime has passed, yet it’s also difficult to believe I’ve already lost so much time. During a one-year tour, each week makes up 1.9% of the assignment. By that math, I’ve already lost 5.8% of my time in Burma (along with post allowances like danger and hardship pay), and the count keeps climbing because of this accident.

Over the 20 days I’ve now spent hospitalized in Thailand, the overall ordeal has felt a bit like Groundhog Day, even as the details of my daily lived experience have shifted subtly over time.

Burma, Foreign Service, Health, Travel

The Land of Smiles

by pennypostcard • December 4, 2025 • 0 Comments

Taking an international flight in a wheelchair is something I never imagined I’d experience. Yet when I arrived in Bangkok a little over two weeks ago, that’s exactly how I traveled—having not taken a single step except for the small ones over the seam between the breezeway and the plane, the only gap the wheelchair couldn’t bridge.

The morning three days after my truck vs. pedestrian accident, motorpool drove me from our house to the airport. An embassy nurse and my husband accompanied. I was pushed in a wheelchair through check-in, immigration, security, and Rangoon’s mostly-empty international departures terminal. I was the second passenger to board the flight, transferred into the tiny, narrow wheelchair that fits down the plane aisle. I settled into a comfortable business-class seat and never got up during the 70-minute flight. When we landed in Bangkok, an ambulance—and finally, answers about my injuries—waited just beyond baggage claim.

Burma, Foreign Service, Travel

The World’s Your Oyster, Part II

by pennypostcard • October 31, 2025 • 0 Comments

In the fall of 2016 while I was serving in Tashkent, I took a quick trip by myself to Bangkok for dental care. Nine years later, we found ourselves serving just an hour’s flight away, so we decided to visit — me for the second time and V for the first time. There’s nothing like a weekend in a new location to change the scene — and your perspective.

Foreign Service, Travel

The World’s Your Oyster

by pennypostcard • December 22, 2016 • 4 Comments

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I boarded a two-thirds empty flight out of Tashkent as the snow flurries began to fall. As the doors closed and everyone raced to the middle rows to lie down, I reseated myself in an empty and quiet emergency exit row. As is typical, the plane’s interior was overheated to the point where I felt ill. “It’s cold near the door,” a flight attendant chastised me in Russian. “Super,” I replied, also in Russian, “Because it is very hot in here for me.”

Purpose of travel: Urgent dental work. Destination: Bangkok.

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