Bangkok and Muak Lek Thailand, January 2026

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For some reason my long-term visa for Vietnam wasn’t processed, so when my 90 days from coming back in from Laos last October had only 6 hours left before expiring, I checked out and went from Hanoi to Bangkok. The round-trip flight was only 126usd, and barely over 100 minutes flying time each way. I had gone to Thailand for the first time in 18 years just 6 months earlier, but that was in a controlled environment. This time I was free to roam around, so saw the SDA Mission headquarters, went shopping/sightseeing, then up to AIU in Muak Lek.

Pr. Songrit who treated me so well 20 years ago when I went to Thailand, letting me stay at a room in the Chinese church. He and I spent a couple of hours then clearing a field where he wanted to stay a training school. I talked to him on the phone this time, but couldn’t meet him. He’s still with that same Chinese church!
Prayer room. Hey! That sounds like where I want to go. 🙂
This light reflection on the floor is mesmerizing.
Prayer room is only for Muslims!
Getting close to DMK airport (the old one) in Bangkok. It’s always interesting to me to see the long, straight streets. I’m pretty sure it has to do with the rice fields being sold in long strips in the past.
So I walked out of the airport (finding how to cross the 8 lanes or so was an adventure) and got to 63 Zleep Hostel at 11:58pm. The lady kindly showed me a dorm room after I paid her 200thb (6.6usd). I wound up staying here 2 nights, skipped a night, then one more night. She seemed to be tired of seeing me by the last day – LoL.
Bus stop right in front of DMK airport. There is a footbridge over all the traffic at the northern end of the airport, near the shuttle buses to BKK, the main airport.
24 hour bonging legal business in Thailand, but I’ve heard there are many who want to shut them down for attracting odd people.
Temple on the other side of the foot bridge from the bus stop. They are garish and all over the place. Thailand needs Jesus.
More people speak passable English than 18 years ago, and the English school thing isn’t as big as it used to be. This sign at DMK airport struck my funny bone.
This is Thailand Adventist Mission’s new headquarters. It was completed just last year. Thailand seemed to be about twice as rich as Vietnam. The Mission has lost its mission, it seems, as there were no evangelistic magazines or pamphlets there for guests, and the worker I met said that Ellen White books must be approved by a committee (and left off the part that the committee never meets). There is no publishing house, as they made good on what they told me in 2006 when I wanted to print the 1858 Great Controversy book, that they would do that. No vision.
The old church on the Mission compound is still there. I was told there are lots of Burmese there now. There was a sizable group of them there 18 years ago. There is also an Adventist school to the right side of that, run by the Mission, and a huge Adventist secondary school just outside the compound (Ekamai) that is quite liberal/compromised. https://www.adventistyearbook.org/entity?EntityID=13095
Road sign to Mission off of main road.

Normal street-side food vendor. You can see lunch prices are 50-60thb (1.70-1.9usd), twice the price in Hanoi. SE Asia street food is not good at all – spicy odd things floating in something, usually tiny bits of dead animals.
MBK center with the Japanese shop Donki (Don Quijote). This was the largest mall in Asia when opened in 1985.
I’ve bot many rice balls at Donki (ドンキ) in Japan, but even the “39” ones you see here are twice what I paid in Japan, and they’re the cheapest ones! They had strawberries from Japan for sale for $26/tray!
MBK mall inside.
Lots of foreigners had disfigured themselves, causing me to tell a Vietnamese friend that their ancestors went overseas to get the pagans to stop doing that to their bodies, and now their descendants are the ones needing converting!
Central World and Big C shopping center in the center of the shopping capital of all SE Asia.
That cool building in the distance was fascinating.
I knew that Hindu ideas were in Thai Buddhism, but it’s not usually so open, and directly supporting it. And this is on Big C’s sign, so I guess they were having some sale, using that idol as promotion – gross. And that’s one of the grossest Hindu gods!
Crazy expensive durian ($38). But they sure made my mouth water!
Pantip was THE place to go for computer-related things 18 years ago. It had maybe over a 100 little shops inside. I got a laptop repaired, and bot a new one that I sent for recycling in Japan just before I left. I thot it had closed by now, but I see it is still open, with the first floor taken over by a Big C and coffee shops.
Back at the airport charging my phone, using wifi, and eating dinner with my haul from Big C. The family in front of me spent about $140 on stuff there. I did OK with my $4 haul.
My bunk spot for $6.6. Had same spot all 3 nites.
Morning walk to the train station over the black, smelly, trashy river.
Haven’t been able to do this in ages, as Japan has upgraded nearly all their trains to not allow the windows to be down. It felt really good.
Many bathrooms in Asia don’t have any toilet paper – it’s just water and mosquito larva in a big bucket, and then a little dipping bucket and spray hose to take care of business. So now you know why you should never shake a left hand!
China is spending over one billion US dollars to build an elevated, high-speed rail into Bangkok. It’s amazing to see nothing except swampy, junky fields, but all along the current rail tracks there are these giant towers going up. Actually, a crane on one of them fell onto a train and killed 32 people a few weeks before going there, and my train only went about 3/4 of the way before they said I couldn’t go anymore. I went the rest of the way in the back of a pickup truck. The station staff was good at helping me to find an alternative.
The people in the pickup couldn’t believe that I would walk to our SDA University (Asia Pacific International University “AIU”) in the heat, but I did for many 2 miles or so. I wandered around in Australia village where most of the university and elementary school staff live, trying to find a shortcut to the school, but even tho I know it used to be there, it’s closed now, and security came and got me and dumped me back out on the main, hot road.
Walking into AIU campus. It’s according to inspired counsel to be out in the countryside. In addition to the two schools, there is Hope Channel, AWR 360, and just off campus the SEUM headquarters, and a health center.
Lunch in the cafeteria was my first hot food since arriving in Thailand. It tasted good!
Inside AIU’s library, there is a new Ellen G. White Research Center that opened just last year (2025). Here is a picture of me with the associate director, Br. Suwit, holding Pr. Kevin Morgan’s book “Glory! Glory! Glory!” that I spent 3 months proofreading in 2024. He treated me like a VIP. It was sad tho to learn that very few students other than theology students who are writing papers for school work come here…
My Malaysian friend who came to see me in Japan last year has his pic up on the bulletin board!
The two English 1858 Great Controversy books that I gifted the school when it was still called “Mission College” are in the EGW Research Center section of the library. I was overjoyed to see that nearly all the spaces on the borrower’s card had been stamped. May God bless all those who have read it.
Two of Pr. Keven Morgan’s books are in the library.
Flower hedge in front of the large campus church that helped shield some of the wind while I tried to sleep there all night. But that hedge couldn’t keep the dew off of me, and I got pretty cold, so around 6 o’clock I got up and went to a bathroom to try and get warm.
AIU is quite different than what it was envisioned to be by its founders. The name was changed several years ago, so no one even knows it’s a Christian school anymore. Around 1/2 the students are non-SDA, and they just want to be educated to get a regular job. When I went in 2006 the head was a European man who even played soccer with the kids on the Sabbath! It seems to be a touch better now, but still there is not a strong religious atmosphere. While there this time, they were having 10 days of prayer with pastor Dan Smith from America. He used to be the campus pastor there. While most of his talk was good, the old style with the false/outdated viewpoints caused some snickers among the students, like the time he showed a satellite view of the world at night, and said you could get a search on Google easily anywhere in the world except maybe Africa because they didn’t have much electricity there, his talk about “overpopulation”, and the time he put down Hyundai cars to show that a Jaguar is what everyone wants… (No, God’s gift he wants to offer isn’t like a car at all, as many people like me don’t want any car!)
Pic of AWR 360 taken from front steps of Southeast Asia Union Mission headquarters. I love AWR 360, and think they are one of the most powerful, effective evangelistic outreaches we have as Seventh-day Adventistis.
Nice SDA church just off campus near the health center and SEUM building.
Had to take a van (6usd) back to DMK airport (around 2 hours), went to 63 Zleep again where the owner looked at me a bit strangely, then I walked around for a while looking for something to eat, but seeing only gross junk, I opted for my usual bread, cucumber, and peanuts out under a streetlight on a mostly quiet back street.
I spent a lot of time here at the airport, charging my phone. You can see a C charger and regular USB charger on the right side. There were 10 stations, and only this one worked. I wondered why the others were installed so poorly, then I saw (twice) people trying with all their might to put their regular plug in NOT on the left side but trying to force them into the C and USB plug on the right!!! Both times they looked liked Indian people. There were lots of Indian tourists! Look at a pic below to see how clean they are(n’t).
It’s not even imaginable in Japan to have a shop selling clothes right between two railroad tracks, inside the crossing!!! The elevated train is made by Japan, and the impression I got is that Thailand has a large Japan influence, while Vietnam has a large Korea influence. Of course China and America have an influence too.
This has been made the main train station now in Bangkok (Bang Sue Grand Station), and as you can see when this noon image was taken, there are hardly any people anywhere.
The priority seating on this Japanese-made train is pretty standard, until you look closely at the figure on the far right.
Bird’s nest soup drink. It’s above 3usd, and marketed as “healthy”.
Here’s your Indian tourist remains at the waiting area for buses just outside DMK airport.
Look at the one for “Hanoi”.
Now look at the same place. Of course everything is showing Chinese now, but the characters for “Hanoi” are “河内”. That’s pretty incredible for me, as the old name of the place where I used to live in Japan as the exact same characters!!! Is this fate or destiny or blind chance or what???!!!
This made me really feel the passage of time. Where people used to be lined up making telephone calls, there are charging stations for smartphones now.
These DIY smoothies looked really scrumptious, but at 7usd/cup, no thanks.
I got out of Nội Bài airport around 9:20pm, and the bus I had planned on taking was already gone. I was calling out to several people for info on how to get into Hanoi city, as the airport is around 17miles from the center of Hanoi. Finally this young lady said in English that this bus went over the river into the city, so I got on. She very willingly helped me figure out where the closest spot it would come to my apartment, which is also where she wanted to get off. Usually she takes another bus or Grab (Uber) to her apt. from there, but when I said I’d walk, she agreed to walk with me, and we had a wonderful hour together. 🙂

After goodbyes, I walked another 50minutes or so to my place, passing two burning piles of wood on the sidewalks where men were gathered to get warm, as the temperature had dipped to around 12C. It was quite a shock coming from hot Bangkok! When I got to my apt. building the gate was coming down! I made a noise so he let it back up, and then went down to the gate by the elevators, opening up that one for me too. Whew! I didn’t know that it shut at midnight. Yes, I could get facial recognition to open the front door of the building anytime I want, but I don’t want. If it happens in the future, I’ll just wait by the front door for someone to come out so I can go in.

This was a really good adventure, and it was a somehow bittersweet memory for me, having lived in Bangkok for 1 and half years, and going to Mission College many times, making friends there, wondering where they are now, are they in the faith, how are the Chinese church members and Filipinos that I met there and had studies of the 1858 Great Controversy book, the family I lived with 8 months, what is life, etc.

3 thoughts on “Bangkok and Muak Lek Thailand, January 2026”

  1. daniel

    It was a good trip seeing my old stomping grounds from 18 years ago. I really hope the Seventh-day Adventist Church prospers in Thailand, but there will need to be a wholesale repentance of compromise with worldly forces before that happens.

  3. Shireen

    Thank you for sharing your travel stories. It’s really nice seeing you posting more photos. God bless you.

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