land of smiles: across the blue

today drew and i got on a plane (don't worry there weren't any snakes on it). we flew from texas and north carolina (respectively) and met up in chicago. i rushed to finish all of the last minute business i needed to take care of on the phone and we boarded a huge 747 to tokyo. i've flown on one of these transcontinental flying beasts a few times before last summer going to london, bucharest, and nairobi. the difference this time was that each of the times before it had been with BA. i remember being awestruck by getting to watch movies or tv shows the whole way with plenty of tasty meals and complimentary socks (which i still have several pairs of, what can i say they were blue and quite comfortable). ANA (our transpacific transporter) was even more impressive. british accents are really cool but when you are going on a serve abroad for six months it strikes you a little deeper when japanese is spoken first and then they offer a english translation second. we still had the cool movies and the meals (of which i got plenty, just one of the perks, if you can call it that, of traveling with a guy that is allergic to half the eatable things known to man), but this time we got warm face towels to clean up before the meal and along with flying with the daylight we flew (as drew put it)"into the future" as we crossed the international date line (i'm on the positive side of time once again).

it was a long flight to tokyo (made all the longer by the fact that the man in the aisle seat, blocking us from the leg stretching freedom provided by that aisle, was asleep for a good 80% of the flight), but jackie chan, chris tucker, and mr. bean made it pretty enjoyable. we made it at last and we stepped foot on to japanese soil about 13 hours after leaving the windy city. we were excited about the free internet we would get to use as we waited for our next flight to bangkok, but that turned into a disappointment we found only the standard pay-to-surf services that most american airports have (apparently julie flew threw hong kong not tokyo and so our hope we falsely raised).

however, as we sat trying (and failing) to be more clever that the internet companies we met a man having similar troubles. talking to him for awhile we learned that he had just come from bangkok and that he worked for a some kind of missions based company. before he left he offered drew and i a service that his company provided to help us learn the thai language for the very convenient cost of free.

we got on a much less crowded 777 to thailand at about 6 pm local time and slept most of the way to bangkok, only waking for a meal and some ice-cream. 7 or 8 hours later we awoke to instructions in japanese, english, and thai to return our seats to the upright position as we made our "final apploach". we said kop khun krup and domo ariegato to our flight attendants and began a hunt for mango and sticky rice (drew's favorite thai dish). going through customs we grabbed our bags and asked a gentleman in a light purple jacket where we could find our gate for the next morning’s flight. after eating some good thai food and talking to my mom on skype drew and i made our way to the area next to the desk we will need to check into and pulled out our thermarests. now we'll get about 3 hours of sleep and wake up to meet julie for our last leg to chiang mai. goodnight all.