Leaving Arizona

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Nov 29 and the beginning of our actual journey. All in all Yuma was not that bad, my $500 win at the casino last night does however help my opinion slightly!

The drive to Palm Springs consists of 3 hours of nothing except a drought stricken barren landscape. At least on the way to Yuma we could count cartoon cacti. The kind people at Alaska Airlines neglected to weigh our luggage so we were very thankful and didn't have to pay for the excess weight made up of 2 lounger style air mattresses for the pool, floating volleyball net (also for the pool), 6 pounds of coffee beans, Salad Dressing, Grape Jam……all of the necessities that we missed last year. There are also 50 or so assorted novels and biographies squeezed in where ever they would fit. They also offered to check our baggage straight through to Bangkok meaning that we wouldn't have to pick up our bags in San Francisco. We thought this sounded great but grew a little apprehensive when neither of them could generate the correct baggage tags TWICE.

Fifteen minutes later they assured us all was well and we headed through security for the first of the four flights that it would take to get to Samui.

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