About 6 months before we left on our round the world trip, I was talking on the phone with my best friend, Ann. Her daughter was planning to participate in a sister city trip to Japan. She had saved money and done fundraising. But then her dad was offered a new job and the family moved from Colorado to California, making her ineligible to go on the sister cities trip.

I suggested that her daughter, Megan, come stay with us in Bangkok instead. I mean, if Los Angeles has a sister city in Asia, it’s got to be Bangkok, right? They are both known as the city of angels. I have no idea how I convinced Megan’s parents to let her come stay with us, let alone fly unaccompanied on an international flight with a layover, but I did, and we had a great time when she stayed with us for two weeks in September.

First of all, it gave us an excuse to go back into tourist mode. We stayed in Bangkok for 6 weeks and had been trying to save money for our flight home, so we hadn’t been doing much before Megan arrived.

Also, my daughters had spent the last 3 months with only each other for company, so they were excited to have someone else their age around.

We had so much fun revisiting favorite places and remember all the things we found weird and unusual at first.

Here are some of the fun things we did:

 

Wat Pho and the Grand Palace

The perfect places to take lots of selfies, of course.

 

Boat ride on the canals near Khlong Lat Mayom floating market

 

Fish spa! It tickles.

 

Megan’s first tuk tuk ride

 

Feasting on fun new foods

Blood cockles

Soup dumplings

 

Wai-ing with Ronald McDonald on Khao San Road

 

Riding the Chao Phraya River Express

 

Sights (and smells) at Phan Nok wet market

 

Buddhist meditation class

 

On Megan’s last day in Bangkok we had already done everything we had planned to do. We couldn’t just do nothing on her last day, so I found a little artist house on the Thornburi side of the Chao Phraya that performed a puppet show.

 

Unfortunately, the show wasn’t happening that day, but we had fun feeding fish and posing with a strange statue.

 

That same day the girls found a playground as we walked from the artist house to the sky train. It was old, metal and rusty, but they loved it. I just hoped they were all up to date on their tetanus shots . . .

 

We had so much fun with Megan and were glad she came to visit us in Bangkok.