We made it! At the moment we are excited to be charging our mobile devices-despite the large flame that just came out of the 'surge protector' when I plugged it into an adapter into the wall. No one was hurt. A little annoyed, though, because I still don't get this adapter nonsense-it appears that we don't even need one-our devices plug right into the wall-but then there's the 250V coming out of the wall into 110-240V devices. Whatever.
So, we made it. It already feels like we've been gone for a week. Traveling through the int'l time portal will do that. At different points on our 30 hour journey to Phuket (pookette), as we've done many times over the past year-we exchanged the What!@#%? glance. Where and who are we and what are we doing? The answer-obviously-traveling to the polar opposite side of the globe.
The 12 hour flight from MSP to Tokyo went fast-relatively. A full flight made it a little more claustrophobic than M would have liked, but we survived-even got to sit together after trying so hard to get better seats. And we learned the rest of the world west of Mpls is always light. We had daylight for 12 straight hours on that flight. We deplaned in Tokyo and went immediately to our next flight that was already boarding for Bangkok (BKK). This flight felt really long since I didn't sleep at all (I was anxious about having so many pieces of luggage stowed all over the plane). Mary had a good flight-slept 5 hours sprawled over 3 seats in front of me. Sometime during this flight is when we went through the portal, I believe. It's that place where enough time and real estate have passed that it's too far to go back (impossible, actually) and the unknown still waits ahead.
We got into BKK on time at 12:30 am and roamed around the massive/modern airport: we first located Air Asia and learned we had to wait until 4:30 am to check in and then went for food. Mary got pad thai and I was content with a muffin and coffee from Starbucks. It then started to feel like the Amazing Race-pic shown to prove it. We had both stolen enough sleep so we weren't delirioius, but somewhere in the can't-wait-to-get-there-but-oh-so-far-still-range. Fast forward through a bunch of sitting on metal seats and checking in and we were en route to Phuket.
Air Asia felt like the MTV airline with pop music, runway model flight attendants and little in the way of in-flight service. The Phuket airport was very small and we were the only flight arriving and waiting for baggage-so it seemed very remote. So grateful that everything arrived in one piece here and that a driver was waiting for us outside. An hour drive through poverty and third-world-looking scenery and we saw a lot we wanted to learn (shrines and temples) and were so very warmly welcomed with scented cloths, smiles and bows and juice from our Thai hosts at the Woraburi.
Yesterday was the first day here and we didn't want it to necessarily be a wash because of the exhaustion. We scouted out the place a little, were impressed with the room setup-even got an upgraded one that walks out (literally) into the pool. No sleepwalking allowed. Ended up napping 4 hours yesterday afternoon, walking around to find an ATM last night on the main drag in front of the hotel (across the street from the ocean with a boardwalk-like atmosphere) and wearily ate veggie pizza (M) and pad thai (me). We fell into bed last night, slept well and were wide-eyed awake at 4 am. Beautiful. We hit the early side of the breakfast crowd here at the hotel and had an 'American' breakfast of toast and jam, pancakes with honey, papaya and pineapple, bacon, cereal and coffee. No stomach issues yet.
We're here and grateful. We're starting to let down a bit after the intense travel. We're expecting and praying for peace, rest and refreshment the next 5 days.
