After ten weeks in New Zealand and Australia, Bangkok was an assault on the senses. I mean that in the best possible way.

Big, chaotic, confusing and a bit intimidating — it was just what we were looking for after the ease of Oz.  We loved Australia, but we had grown soft there, losing the hard-earned “travelers’ edge” we had acquired in South America.

We arrived at Bangkok’s ultra-modern Survarnabhumi Airport, one of South East Asia’s busiest, and home to the third largest airport terminal in the world.

Suvarnabhumi made headlines round the world in late 2008 when the People’s Alliance for Democracy blockaded and seized the airport, demanding the resignation of the government of Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat.

All flights to and from the airport were canceled for nearly a week, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded.

The protests gave us pause (particularly as portrayed by CNN), and we briefly considered not traveling to Thailand.

But as the weeks passed, it became apparent that our concerns were overblown. The standoff at the airport had been tense, but the country itself was not a dangerous place for visitors.

A little history helps put the recent protests in context.

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