the Perks of Jetlag

SO, I am home now back in the NOLA and wanted to do a final update.

I realize my last post from the JFK airport made no sense (not that any of my other posts are any example of clarity) but not sleeping and extensive travel does this to you.

Anyway-while I started this blog as an alert to the fam and close friends, it has also become sort of a web journal for me to remember this amazing experience...SO I felt that it was appropriate to wrap up and fill in any holes. BUT, first I must finish the final adventure.

While stumbling home from our GOLF game, Jess convinced a songthaew(mix between a taxi/tuk tuk/mini bus with no back driver to bring us to the airport tomorrow for about a quarter of the standard fare. I guess we shouldnt have been surprised the next day when he never showed.

We woke up the next day for a long breakfast and relaxing sun time for a few hours before we had to catch our 3 oclock flight from Krabi back to Bangkok where we were to catch a flight to Tokyo then JFK, and then NOLA for me.

Obviously we had to find a new mode of transportation to the airport. the driver brings us to the airport with only TWO sketchy stops. One: to drop off a little girl at her house who we picked up on the way (???) and two: for him to sign in at the bus station and try to sell us rambutan fruit (looks like a sea urchin). So we eventually get to the airport and went to check in for our AIR ASIA flight (air asia basically is a giant flying bus) when they todl us that they just decided that it wasnt going to happen and would we mind leaving ona later flight. Actually, we would mind, being as we have a flight home to the states, but okay.

So we end up buying new tickets on thai airways (which serves food but it is so heinous that it seems like they serve that on purpose...remember the chicken/fish hyrbid? this time it was a jello fruit pound cake fruit cake lemony hyrbid. EEK.

Back in bangkok and our bags come and we get ready for our five hours of sitting. A woman from the tourism agency comes up to us, because really, how could we avoid any last minute haggling, and asks us if we were American. I looked at her strangely. She looked back. "Actually we grew up here. We're Thai." Apparently sarcasm (although rude according to my mother) does not work with the language barrier.

Anyway, I have to share our experience with the last interesting person we met in Thailand because she really was FASCINATING. the woman, Joanna, sitting next to us thought it was funny and struck up a conversation. She was from Minnesota and studied to be a pastor before peacing out to Thailand and taking her two children, who are now 20 and 25. She started her own NGO and lives with a Karen hill tribe in Burma, working to teach them about sanitation and nutrition. Jess and I confessed our ignorance to the apparent persecution and genocide of the Karen people who not only suffer from hunger and poverty but discrimination and exile. It was so sad to talk to her and we explained to her that she should utilize university students as a volunteer asset as we have many friends from school that have been active not only in the United States but in Africa and around the world doing microfinance and the like.

For our last meal in Thailand, we were on a search for Mango with sticky rice and pad thai and of course all we really want at this point is Burger King. Jess also needed to find a gift for Barbie.

Around ten at night, we boarded our Japan Airlines flight (really never seen so many Japanese business men and felt so sloppy large and American)and Jess insisted that her ginormously tall friend (ie, me) get an exit row seat. Japan Airlines serves a lot of tea and rice snacks and the like. Unfortunately, the congealed rice dishes dont sit well and Jess and I had to opt for a luna bar instead. Note: our last flight from tokyo to NY served WAFFLES AND PANCAKES ("western style") so Jess and I had something to eat while everyone else ate fish eggs and the like. No wonder Americans are so fat.

22 hours of flying and about 14 hours of layovers we landed in NY and had to say goodbye. I DONT KNOW WHEN I AM GOING TO SEE JESS NEXT. This saddened us greatly.



Some things I forgot to mention and have no idea how I forgot this:

-there is a fish tank in the mall where you PAY to put your feet in a fish tank with many other people. people do this so fish can eat the dead skin off the bottom of your feet. notabene: It was on a Weeds episode

-hilarious drag show where "lady boys" performed show tunes, Celine, Whitney Houston and the like


-a tuk-tuk driver who had his son in the front seat with him, adorable

-roasted grasshoppers on the street. eek. bon appetit.

Pictures will be put on facebook in the next week. Thank yall all for following!!!