Well I’m back … But I think that most people knew that. Been back since last Wednesday night actually, but have had house guests, cleaning and things like that keeping me busy. Anyway, that’s probably not all that interesting.

I just picked up 10 rolls of film and am slowly sorting through it getting ready to post. I spent the last five weeks in USA and Tokyo; traveling first to San Francisco, then LA, then Niskayuna, then Killington, back to Niskayuna, over to Cincinnati, again Niskayuna, again Killington, again LA, Tokyo and finally home. I arrived the night of the inauguration and (embarrassingly) have still yet to watch it. The trip was loads of fun, nice to see family and friends and then Tokyo was even more interesting than I had expected.

Every year when I go back to the states, I love how disconnected I am. I don’t get a cell phone there, and I’m 12 hours of time-zone away from Thailand (although I guess I am closer to California). If people want to reach me, they have to call the land-line at my parent’s (yes, people still use those things) or send me an email and hope that I check it. It feels really nice to not be constantly interrupted, and I imagine that the people I’m spending time with like the fact that our conversations aren’t constantly interrupted by beeps. As soon as I get back, I tend to forget how nice this all felt and I go back to sending zillions of SMSs and looking at my phone the moment it beeps. So that’s my resolution for the year, to ignore my phone more. To send fewer messages, to let the phone beep or ring if I am talking to someone or eating a meal, stuff like that. There are a few other smaller resolutions too, stuff like bringing my own containers to the street vendors who sell cut-up fruit, and trying to use the word jejune in conversation at least once a day.

I never posted about my 40 hour return trip, at least not the details. When Michael and I finally realized that the BKK airports were not going to open for a while (Jimmy had left already), we decided to return to BKK via Laos and just be good sports about it. We tried to book a flight from Hanoi to Vianteene but found out that we would have to spend another night in the hotel and then pay $200 USD each for tickets. The alternative of a $20 bus ride didn’t seem so bad in comparison, especially since it left that night.

We left Hanoi via van around 5pm, took the van for an hour to the edge of town, got left on the side of the street, walked 10 min to the bus station, took the bus to the Laos border, waited two hours for the border to open, paid $35 for a visa, walked 10 min into Laos, rode the bus through Laos to the Vianteene on the border of Thailand, got a truck to take us over the friendship bridge into Nongkai, got to the train station, paid around $15 for a 2nd class train ticket (that’s all they had), rode in an un-air-conditioned train car for 15 hours, then finally took a cab from the BKK train station to my apt. Ohh, and I managed to poop using a squat toilet on a moving train (impressive?). The whole trip took about 40 hours, which is more than going to and from the USA.

The bus was full of Thai people, which made it fun and was probably a change from the backpackers who normally ride the bus-circuit. The people we met on the bus really all really cool and make all of the transfers much easier, I’m not sure we would have figured it all out on our own.

Some photos below.

Rest stop somewhere in Vietnam

The border crossing into Laos

I forget why I took this, hopefully someone can translate

Chickens coming to check out the bus