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Published: December 1st 2010
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Well, here we are at last. Our final hours of our southeast Asian swing. In about four hours, we'll be heading to the airport in Bangkok. If you math whizzes want a challenge, here ya go: We depart Bangkok at 1am on Thursday. We land in Seattle (7500 miles away) at 11am on Thursday...yet, TWENTY-SIX hours (and two nights) pass in the meantime (10 hours at the airport in Seoul and 16 hours in the air). Then we have an additional thirteen hours of Thursday once we arrive in Seattle. So, for us, Thursday is going to be 41 hours long. Is that the goofiest thing you've ever heard or what??
Anyway, on Friday I graduated from my 3-week course of Thai massage. On the last day, we got to make fun herbal balls used for therapeutic massage - chopping up fresh herbs, wrapping them into a pretty little cloth, steaming them, and then applying them to various pressure points around the body. Very fun (if a little impractical). I received my diploma (yay!), hugged my adorable teachers goodbye, and headed on home. We celebrated with a final Mexican feast at El Diablo Burritos before taking the overnight train back
to Bangkok (16 hours) and back to Kate's lovely downtown condo.
And here we've been for the past four days, being...well, insanely lazy, to be honest. After 14 months on the road, suffice to say that our passion for sightseeing has fizzled - there's only so much the brain can take in. So we've been getting lots of sleep (since we'll have none on our two back-to-back red eye flights between here and Seattle) and watching Lin-Ping the baby panda on the "Panda Channel." On Sunday, we went down to the opulent Paragon Siam shopping mall and watched a movie (Unstoppable)...but the highlight was after the previews, when they play a 5-minute video montage that is a salute and tribute to their beloved king. Everyone stands respectfully, as you would for a national anthem, and pays their honor to the king before the movie begins. And yes, this is repeated before each and every movie, in each and every movie theater in all of Thailand. Personally, I thought it was pretty cool.
Today, for our last day in Thailand, Kate took us to the Jim Thompson house, a beautiful home built by an American architect-turned-silk-trader back in the
1950's. A bit of fun trivia - he reintroduced America to the beautiful Asian silk by taking samples to the editors of Vogue magazine after the second World War. Then his silks were used to make all the costumes in the classic musical, "The King and I." Then, while on vacation in Malaysia in 1967, Jim went out for a hike in the Cameron Highlands and was never seen again - no body, nothing. Just up and vanished. All of his fortune passed to his nephew, who opened his house as a museum. It has lovely gardens and a grand collection of Asian paintings, ceramics, and sculptures. If you've been to Vizcaya in Miami, picture an Asian version of that and you'll start to get an idea. A nice quiet way to round out our visit to Bangkok.
So!!! That's all we have to report for now. We've been diligently following the news reports for the goings-on in Korea, but so far, nothing is affecting the airports, so our flight and layover in Seoul are still on-schedule. We had planned to take a tour of the city during our long layover, but we've been advised that it's best to
stay at the airport, so we'll be hanging there (although we hear it's a fantastic airport - movie theaters, art classes, day spas, the works)...so we shouldn't get too bored. After spending all day Thursday there, we take an overnight flight to Seattle, and yep, you guessed it...it's Thursday morning when we land. Kind of like time-traveling. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it. So we'll be stateside in just over 30 hours, where we'll be hanging with our buddies Sam and Lexie for 3 days (and snowboarding, of course!) before we land in Florida on Sunday. Expect a final blog from us early next week!!
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Trent
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Enjoyed the blogs
Wow what an adventure, I have really enjoyed reading your blogs since your Journey has begun. i know I have not commented but I have read every single blog you sent and must say I am very jealous of your amazing expierence! I think it is great that you both had the courage to set out on such an amazing adventure that most of us just dream about! Safe travels coming home. we will have to catch up sometime once you are back in FL.