Thailand Trip - LA

Thailand was an amazing trip that I'll never forget. I'm finding travelling is addictive - the more trips I take the more I want to take. I had such a good time on this trip for many reasons: Thailand is a beautiful country with very friendly people, I learned a lot about its culture and history, the weather was great, and Erin is a great partner to travel with. Erin and I complement each other very well - I handle the important documents and money, Erin finds the fun places to visit, and we work out the logistics together.

The tour we booked started and ended in Los Angeles so we decided to get ourselves to LA a few days early and spend the weekend with my uncle Hal. Jason and Melissa had never been to California before so we hit some of the famous LA landmarks.

We flew into LA on Friday afternoon and met Hal on Venice beach. It was chilly but we enjoyed a nice dinner and saw muscle beach. We then drove up to Santa Monica beach and had a drink at the end of the pier.

Hal conveniently lives just a couple miles from Hollywood and has several friends who work in show business. Both Friday and Saturday nights we went to an improv theatre on the Hollywood strip to see some of his friends perform. Afterwards we walked up Hollywood Blvd (midnight on a Friday to make it more interesting) to Grauman's Chinese Theatre to "see the stars"

On Saturday we took a nice hike in Griffith Park to the infamous Hollywood sign (which I found out used to read Hollywoodland but it was naturally shortened when weather damaged the end of the name around 1950), went to the Farmer's Market, the LaBrea Tar Pits, and the ritzy Rodeo Drive.



It was a nice weekend to kick off the trip and to break up the long travelling time to Thailand.