around the world in 180 days

We left Steve and Phuket yesterday, and flew back to Bangkok. Anna was awake the night previous with the dreaded stomach problems and last night didn’t go so well either. She’s taking antibiotics and meds for guardia (which don’t conflict and won’t cause her problems) in hopes to clear this out. If they don’t do any good, then it’ll be back to the hospital to tell the umteenth doctor about her embarrassing stomach problems. I’m hoping the meds will work.

It’s ridiculous that we, but more so Anna, get sick so often. We are as careful as possible with food and water and all that and it doesn’t make any sense that so many stomach illnesses should hit us.  What caused it this time? Who knows? Maybe it was from swimming in the lake 2 1/2 weeks ago in Pokhara. That’d be the right time frame for Guardia. Maybe it was from contaminated ice in our watermelon juice in Phuket. Maybe it was a dirty spoon, or maybe it was any number of other things. I can tell you that she’s awfully sick of being sick and I am too.

With luck, Europe will be better on that front. We booked tickets today, and are flying to Munich on June 11. We’ll spend the next five weeks in central/eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany) before flying non-rev (thank you so much Steve) on NWA back to MSP in the middle of July. Since we’re flying non-rev (non-revenue, Steve can fly people on NWA for no profit, as long as he’s with them or they are going to MSP–it saves us hundreds of $), we won’t know exactly when we’ll be back until we actually get seats on the flight,  We’ll probably be flying out of Amsterdam, as NWA has three flights a day out of there. With a little luck, we might be sitting in first class on our last fight.

Before we fly to Europe, though, we feel obligated to see some of the “real” Thailand (as if the beaches aren’t real). We’re going up north tomorrow, to a place in the hills called Chaing Mai that is famous for being a lovely place to visit. As long as Anna’s stomach isn’t causing her trouble anymore, we’re planning on doing a guided trek through the forests to see hill-clan villages and probably be pressured to buy souvenirs from them. We’re also talking about doing a cooking class whilst up there, but of course, all this depends on Anna’s stomach. We’ll be flying back on June 10 to spend the night in the lovely Bangkok airport before flying off to Munich.