The Airport

6 – 17 Sunday – Day 1

Due to increased airport security, we arrived at the airport 2.5 hours before our flight is scheduled to depart only to discover that it has been delayed. Adam is so cute – like a kid at Disneyland. He’s been pulling me through the airport at a near trot despite my best efforts to explain that getting to the gate faster will not make the plane take off any sooner. The waiting area is mostly composed of Asians and a group of young high schoolers sporting a shirt that reads “Team Cambodia. Spreading faith and love.” Adam is sitting next to me attempting in a last ditch effort to learn Thai before we arrive – he keeps mumbeling incomprehensible sounds. I will let you all in on a little secret about Adam: he is the very best travel companion in the world. He is not only laid back and adventuresome, but he always lets me have the isle seat. How could you not love someone like that?

Despite sitting in the airport on my way to Thailand, it still doesn’t seem real to me. When I try to picture the next month of my life, I can see myself in vaious situations – walking through crowded streets, eating Thaifood, laying on the beach – but I can’t really wrap my head around what it is going to be like. Maybe thats a good thing. There is great injoyment that comes from not knowing what every second of your life holds.

6-18 Monday Day 2 (still flying around on planes)

3 movies, 2.5 hours of sleep, 2 meals, and 1 TV show later, I have arrived in South Korea. The South Korean airport is beautiful wiht big glass windows everywhere. They sent us through security when we got off the plane (in case we cleverily pocketed their silver knives on the plane) and I completely forget about my full water bottle. They confuscated it quick as a whip and refused to give it back. They must have taken pity on me (big circles under my eyes, looking totally helpless) because they dumped the water and gave it back.

I’m trying to look at the sun in order to convince my brain that it is in fact 7pm even though it is trying to convince me that it is 3am. It is winning. My goal is to stay awake until we get to the hotel in Bangkok (1am Bangkok time…11am Seattle time yesterday). I have seen the same sun since I woke up this morning 18 hours ago! Its weird to think that you can follow the sun and never see it set yet the days will pass anyway. I guess it goes to show that time is meaningless without space…wow, my porrt sleep deprived brain is having a hard time getting around this idea right now. Adam is juggling and collecting quite a crowed of curious on lookers.

6 – 19 6:15am Bangkok time – at the hotel

Wow, I wish I coudl wake up at 6 am in Seattle and feel this well rested! Our plane arrived in Bangkok at 11:15pm last night and I slept most of the last leg so getting to sleep in Bangkok was a little difficult. Sleeping on the plane turned out to be a good idea because we ran into a little difficulity at the airport and I was glad that I had some rest. Picutre a giant grey tent made out of metal and you pretty much have the Bangkok airport. I expected it to be fairly slow at midnight, but I guess the city that never sleeps includes the airport because it was bursting at the seams. We were greated by a wall of people anxiously trying to meet our eye so they coudl offer us their transportation services. Many stood directly beneath signs warning people to only take metered taxis. This si something we had read as well so we were able to avoid this particular pitfall. We made our way to the ATM machine only to discover that our cards did not work! This posed a slight problem as it was the primary means of acquiring funds that we had brought along. We made a plan to call our bank in the morning and quickly exchanged all the cash that we had (about $100). Having an immediate, although tempory source of income was comforting and – in our sleep deprived haze – managed to take it to a very nice Taxi driver. I remembered after blindly agreeing to the first price quoted that everything is negotiable and probably could have gotten the ride cheaper. Oh well…next time. We are staying at the Bhiman Inn and were pleasently surprised to find that it is absolutely lovely. We met a nice couple on their honeymoon as well checking in from Oregon. I managed to sleep a bit from 1am until now, but I know that I am going to be tired tonight.

9am –

We got the money thing sorted out…I hope. After struggling with a phone card for about 1/2 and hour, Adam managed to get it to work and we found out that if we go to a bank, we can get access to funds without an ATM. Cross your fingers for us. We enjoyed a wonderful breakfast at our hotel and everyone has been really nice to us. I can’t say enough nice things about the people here. We kept going back to the poor girl working at the 7-11 because we couldn’t get our card to work. She didn’t speak any English and apparently Adam’s Thai is not understandable to people who actually speak Thai, but she never got cross with us. She helped us as much as she could and we eventually got it to work. Our hotel is right on the river, which sounds nice, but the river is so polluted that it looks more like a brown stream. Did I mention that it is hot! I love the heat and even I’m melting. 85 degrees is not that bad in Seattle, but it is like a tropical rainforest here. Despite (or maybe because of) our tribulations, Adam and I are having a blast. Adam got some really strange fruit at a market and every time we cross a road we’re never sure if we will make it to the other side. I miss you all.