Welcome To Bangkok

Welcome to Bangkok-



After a day's worth of travel (we skipped over Sunday), a first for both of us, we've set up camp in Bangkok. It's everything we read about; hot, sweaty, chaotic, familiar, totally foreign and completely friendly. Buildings that you'd find in any metro U.S. city right next to shanty towns, men jackhammering in flip flops, shorts and t-shirts....insane road crossings, broken sidewalks, divine food. You name it. The maps don't necessarily reflect reality, but there is no shortage of friendly Thais willing to help.

Last night, as we walked around trying to catch up to our jet lag, a man asked if we wanted a cab. We told him "no thanks, our hostel is right across the street". Then he said "Bing bing chow?". I thought he had noticed how willing I was to want to learn the local language. To me, "bing bong chow" was Thai for "no thanks friendly man, I don't need a cab". Jenn astutely recognized that he was saying "Ping Pong Show?". What's that? Well, it a show were incredibly talented Thai women shoot ping pong balls using nothing but the unmentionables. Can they catch them? We may never know.

Our Route

View Jenn and Tyson SE Asia Trip in a larger map

Packing

This is what it looks like when you are trying to pack for Christmas. And for 4 months in Southeast Asia. And you have to move out of your apartment. All at the same time. This photograph was taken yesterday at about 2:00 pm, after we had been trying to pack for about 4 hours. I wish I could say that now, on Sunday night, the apartment looked much better, but unfortunately, it still feels like a bomb went off in here.

We live in a furnished studio cottage. Most of our belongings have been in storage for months. Why is it taking us so long to get everything packed?

It is amazing how much "stuff" we accumulate in our lives. It becomes really obvious when you are trying to consolidate everything you own into a small storage unit. And the truth is, we probably don't need all that stuff. You just gather it up as you move through life, and suddenly, you have this giant mountain of things. And of course, some items are important and useful, but much of it could go away and we wouldn't miss it.

I'm not being sanctimonious. I'm not saying we should stop buying new things or that it is wrong to get joy or happiness out of buying new things. You should see all the stuff we have purchased in preparation for this trip. (Evidence: travel pillow, see previous post.) I'm just realizing, through the exercise of packing our lives away, that we really don't need all this stuff to be happy. Duh.

For the next four months, we will be together and we will have everything we need to survive and be comfortable in small packs on our backs. I can't think of anything more liberating.

This is what is getting me through the torture of packing.

Preparation

Last month, I started to stress out that we hadn't done enough research for the trip. My friend Jess told me not to worry about planning too much, that it was better to just have a general idea of where we wanted to go as plans would likely change as we traveled. She advised me to focus on "extracting ourselves" from our lives here: getting out of the cell phone contracts, the car insurance, forwarding the mail, figuring out how to deal with our taxes, etc.

Over the past week or so, I have been working on extracting us from our current lives and preparing for the next 4 months. I have to admit, it hasn't been that fun. I never thought it would be so frustrating to try to get my insurance to pay for our travel medication or to get a straight answer from the IRS. (By the way, did you know that you can apply for an extension to file your taxes but not an extension to pay? What? Don't you need to file your taxes in order to figure out what you owe?)

So in the midst of all these administrative tasks, we are finding it hard to feel excited for the trip. I mean, believe me, we are really excited, but it feels so surreal, so far away, so unknown. We have no idea to expect from the places we see, from the people we meet, and from ourselves.

The next 13 days are about unplugging here and getting ready for there. Doesn't Tyson look unplugged already?

Tyson is sporting the new 2010 "galaxy" eye mask and
coordinated plush neck travel pillow. Sweet dreams.

Time Travel

As Tyson and I were eating breakfast this morning, I realized that something about our trip wasn't making sense to me. My confusion was related to our departure from San Francisco and the extraordinary speed at which it appeared we would arrive in Bangkok. Our flight out of SFO leaves on December 27th at 12:05 am and is scheduled to arrive in Bangkok at 11:20 am on December 28th. Given the fact that Bangkok is 15 hours ahead of us in California, how could we possibly leave at night on the 27th and arrive first thing the next morning on the 28th?

Is it time travel? Did we get a special deal with our plane tickets that will get us from Point A to Point B faster than it is possible (and logical for that matter)? Hooray for time travel! Our 4 month trip will be so much easier! No long bus rides cramped in small seats with farm animals, no overnight trains where sleep is fleeting as you worry about someone running off with your belongings. For a brief moment, we were puzzled, yet hopeful.

And then, our brains kicked in.

You see, when your plane leaves on December 27th at 12:05 am, you don't actually leave on the night of December 27th, you leave very late on the night of December 26th. And you fly and you fly and you fly and you completely lose December 27th somewhere between here and there and arrive safely in Thailand on December 28th.

Right. It seems so obvious. Except it wasn't. Time travel. You were ours for a moment.

It's ok. We are taking comfort in the fact that we were smart enough to figure this out before we showed up at the airport on the night of the 27th and found out that our plane had left 24 hours earlier. Go Team.

Travel Drama Before We Even Leave

The plan was to only plan the first week of the trip and to see where the wind took us for the rest of our journey. We fly into Bangkok on December 28th and are staying in a hostel for 2 nights (Suk 11, http://www.suk11.com/; thanks Craig and Jess!) After that, we planned on taking the night train on December 30th from Bangkok to Chumphon in southeast Thailand where we would catch a ferry to the island of Ko Tao at 7:00am. We have reservations for a 4-day dive certification class on Ko Tao (http://www.scuba-junction.com/) and were planning on kicking off New Years Eve on this gorgeous island. We have our plane tickets to Bangkok. We have our hostel reservations at Suk 11. We have our ferry tickets from Chumphon to Ko Tao. Guess what? The train from Bangkok to Chumphon on December 30th is SOLD OUT! That's right folks. It's holiday time everywhere and we have no train! So we are working on trying to get a bus but communicating quickly with agencies in Thailand is really testing my patience! Wish us luck; we are still waiting to hear if we can get tickets on a bus through the company runs the ferry we are taking to Ko Tao. I guess this is just preparing us for the many obstacles we will experience during our travels. I am probably supposed to learn something from this like being calm in the face of challenge, being patient and trusting that things will work out. Great lessons. But right now, I am freaking out that we might not get out of Bangkok before New Years Eve.....