planes, trains, n tuk tuks….

After a quick shower n snooze we checked out f our hotel n headed to Bangkok city center backpackers district Kho San Road / Rambutri street to find a guesthouse.  Kho San is a world renound SE Asia backpackers crossroads and seems more in person like a refugee camp for dreadlocked, fisherman pant wearing, leather skined travelers.  With of course the  fresh faced newbys mixed in.  We were obviously the later.  one dead give a way being the size fo my backpack.  Having a pack that can get you thru 2.5 months w/out many mod cons along the way is a challenge unto itself.  I brought the bare minimum for such a stay and even then it was 3x the size of beeler’s pack and 10x the weight.  B’s always been a light packer as i knew from our summer in Italy where she brought enough for one week and proceeded to wear my clothes the entire summer.  so  when our packs came off the belt, i assumed i would be her salvation this trip.   I assumed wrong.  one day in the blistering 103 d heat and i was seriously reconsidering my pack situation.  “nothing has ever been more miserable” was said and meant, and the thought of even one more day carrying that pack unfathomable.   I had such severe pack envy that apparently even started talking about it in my sleep.

Good news is that i was not the first one to overestimate their endurance level and KoSan is litted with pack shops all a pint sized version of my Dana Design beast.  Dana, the monkey on my back, was offloaded into the long term storage at our guesthouse and i trotted off to haggle for a 25$ north face.   We unloaded all inapropriate gear, including winter fleeces,? we both brought.  The heat is so extreme that even pants seem an irresponsible weight to bare so we both downsized all but our coolest gear.  The 9 medicine bottles each with attached prescriptions got consolidated while we hoped that no cambodian boarder patrol would arrest us for smuggling unidentifiable pills.

A two hr flight, a 3 hr layover, a 13 hr flight and I arrived in Tokyo Narita Airport which was to be my rendevous spot with Beeler before we boarded another 7.5 hr flight to Bangkok.  Her flight arrived a good 7 hrs before mine so i expected to see her already comfortably at the gate. nope. crused duty free and cafes. nothing.  Sure she’d show up soon i just waited at the gate for a couple hrs. 10m to boarding and still no sign, i was resolved to go it alone, half convinced that she jumped an earlier flight and was lounging at our agreed hotel in Bangkok.  Got in the boarding que and just before i reach the desk low and behold there she is weary eyed and concerned scanning the crowd for me.  She apparently had been there all along sitting withing 10 ft of me for hours neither of us seeing each other.  hysterical.  not a good start.  i blame the fact that she was wearing a purple fleece lying down on a purple seat.  the perfect narita camaflauge.

Arriving in Bangkok after midnight we were thermally scanned by a camera to detect swine flu , handed in our promisory notes to customs that we had none of the symtoms within the past 2 weeks.  i however had caught a sudden sneezing, running nose symtom on the flight.  All the japanese passengers wearing their hygenic masks the entire flight peered at me suspiciously in  germophobic justification and i just knew one of them would be a tattle tale and i’d start my trip in quarantine.  When the haz mat suit wearing official boarded the plane i gave them all my most intimidating shut your face stare. it worked. no one talked.