We finally made it to Thailand! It went a little something like this:
Minneapolis to San Francisco late afternoon Friday the 29th. The amazing thing is that we were both upgraded. This is not amazing in and of itself, but I am flying on an award ticket, and despite being Gold Elite one never gets upgraded on an award ticket. Approximate flight time: 3 hr 40 mins
Overnight in San Francisco - land at SFO around 8:00 PM Pacific and head down to a hotel G found near the finacial district. Grab a drink and a snack and get some sleep.
Take BART back to SFO preparing for 11:30 AM 31 Decemeber flight to Tokyo. Approximate flight time to Tokyo 10 hr 30mins. Amount of sleep BK: 0 mins, amount of sleep G: 30 - 45 mins. Movies watched BK: 5, movies watched G: 3 (I think). The Airbus A330 is the most comfortable long distance craft I have been on.
Arrive in Tokyo Narita airport approximately 4:00 PM Japan time - continuing flight to Bangkok is delayed almost 2 hours, doesn’t leave until 8:00 PM Japan time. We are too tired and disoriented to do much of anything.
Board flight to Bangkok, almost instantly fall alseep. Requested vegetarian meal and are awakened for it. Some sort of strange square of mystery substance. G eats most of it, I am frightened and tired and eat the desert and fall back to sleep. Approximate flying time: 7 hrs 40 mins - there was a mean head wind most of the way.
Arrive in Bangkok approximately 1:00 AM 1 January local time, missed New Years, no champagne on the plane, at least in coach. Get through customs and hop a shuttle to the Novetel hotel by the airport. Send email to folks, find out about bombings in Bangkok - total surprise.
Turns out to be one of the best places we have ever stayed. At least as great in every way as every Four Seasons we have stayed at. Sadly, arrival at 2:00 AM Thailand time with a 7:15 AM flight. Total sleep time, approximately 3 hrs.
Wake up and head back to the airport for a short hop to Koh Samui via Bangkok Airlines. They are very friendly and served breakfast on a 1 hr 10 min flight - included our vegetarian special request. Really quite a nice flight.
Arrive in Koh Samui approximately 8:30 AM - one of the most interesting airports ever - there are no gates (at least not any obvious ones) and everyone takes little bus like carts from the plane to the ‘terminal’ - which is actually some thatch roof open air huts. The folks from our hotel were right there to meet us.
After all this travel and little sleep, we are both a little tired. We took a walk around the village we are staying in Bophut, but we’ll have more to say on that later. For now we are going to take a quick nap and try to get on Thai time.
We’re in the beautiful city by the Bay for whole 12 hours or so. We were lucky enough to be upgraded on our flight to SFO just to face a crying infant in the first class cabin. Also, as I am going through a nasty cold let me tell you: flying congested is not fun! I got off the plane 4 hours ago and my left ear still hasn’t popped.
A hit of Tylenol PM, and I am waiting to pass out for my last full night of sleep for several days. Tomorrow morning, we’re off to Bangkok via Tokyo.
Hopefully we will have some updates here as we go along, but it appears that the net is down through much of Asia and who knows when it will be back to full speed. So check back often to see how it’s going, but for now, ciao.
Alcohol consumed at Kwannukas party — 2.5 wine bottles
Now B + G household is furiously preparing for our upcoming trip to Thighland (that’s how BK’s grandpa calls it). No need for silly roll-away luggage; we’re backpacking this trip! Thus, the need for ultraportable everything– we even discussed sharing underpants (just kidding– who needs underpants in tropical paradise?)
YouParkLikeAnAsshole.com allows everyone to take over the responsibility that our taxes can’t pay for. Essentially, you download a half sheet ‘ticket’ - and if you have your camera phone on you, snap a quick pic and submit, allowing the offender to re-live the moment. The web: Anonymizing, dis-intermediating, empowering and now reaching in the ‘real’ world.
I noticed an interesting article from the NY Times today, and just had to read it. The title read Talk in Class Turns to God, Setting Off Public Debate on Rights, and I sort of expected an article about a teacher who mentioned his/her personal beliefs in a benign and non-threatening manner and is, ahem, crucified for it.
Instead, I found an article about a teacher proselytizing, evangelizing, and demonizing his students. I really expected to be sympathetic to the teacher, and the NY Times is a little on the liberal side so I expected the teacher to be beat on a little, but read the article - even if the teacher is only half as bad as described it is too far.
Personally, I really think that teachers need to have some latitude to share their thoughts with their students. This is a part of what makes a good teacher a good teacher. It allows him/her to connect with students on a personal level, allow the students to disagree respectfully. It makes it possible for the students to see the teacher as human, fallible, yet still respected. The best teachers find a way to connect with the class on a human level and avoid being the ‘haloed icon’ that many teachers require. Those teachers who can reach their students at the personal level evoke a sense of excitement and passion for learning. While fictional, Dead Poet’s Society, is a great example that is more of less believable.
Yet the situation described in this article is a teacher gone too far. This is a teacher failing to foster debate, thought and conversation, but instead demanding compliance, forcing views on students, and accusing those with alternate beliefs. Based on the headline, I really wanted to defend this teacher as a victim of a litigious society, but if only half, even 25% is accurate - this teacher deserves to go down. I’m doubly amazed that a town just a few miles from Manhattan, one of the more diverse and tolerant places (in my experience) would side with the teacher and believe this student to be a money-grubbing *sshole (which may be true, but does not seem to be the case).
Good luck young man, hopefully you are learning valuable lessons about choosing your battles, politics and ‘the system’ - it is tough lesson.
In preparation for our upcoming trip to Thailand, I was expecting some acute technolofy depravation. Namely, I do not want to bring a work laptop,do not want to bring a $2000+ Mac and my Palm LifeDrive just doesn’t have enough functionality to cover me for 2 weeks.
So, I started asking around for small, slightly older machines. While many friends had older laptops lying around, they did not fall in to the price range "we" were looking for. G, with her infinite patience and understanding for my techno-fetish went out, without my knowledge and found a ultra-portable on eBay - a little Toshiba Portege that weighs in ata whopping 1.6 lbs - ths is almost as light as my Crackberry. The power brick is heavier. so, this rocks. I’m using it right now (more on that later).
One of the primary reasons I wanted a machine is to ensure our photos are adequately backed up off the camera (an easy thing to lose/have stolen/loose memory card). Then I realized that our Net access would be limited at best, and I hoped to immortalize the trip with regular posts here, but Net access will be limited and we’ll need to check email quick and so on. So, on the jourey to find an offline blog editor. And I may have. This post is being composed offline - and if you areseeing it, then the experiment worked and you will likely see posts from Thailand.
