Transitioning to Thailand

The day I flew to Thailand (the 16th) I felt like a travel pro. I wasn't stressed, I got all of my short to do list for the day done (short to do list because I have learned to not put everything off to the day of departure), I got to the airport early, and I was flying to another country, another continent and totally calm. Airports seem like more natural places to find myself now, and are a great place for me to debrief my latest adventures and prepare for the next. I bought my first guidebook of the trip for Thailand, I had looked in second hand stores earlier that day to no avail and decided that I know so little about Thailand that I may not be able to wing it as well without a guidebook.

I had a window seat with an empty seat next to me, optimum 9 hour flight conditions, and I spent a good amount of that nine hours working on a statement of purpose for the McNair Program (http://depts.washington.edu/uwmcnair/about.htm). One of the many excuses of why my blogging has slacked is that I have been spending most of my computer time writing for various applications. In New Zealand I was applying to be a cabin-counselor for the Patsy Collins Adventure in Leadership summer camp program(http://www.seattleymca.org/page.cfm?id=leadership), for which I later did a 5am phone interview for from Sydney and am very excited to say that I will be working for them for part of this summer, orcas island here I come! While in Australia I was working on my application for the American Indian Student Commission Director position at UW for next school year, which I hope to hear back about soon.

I got off the plane dazed with sleepiness. The international airport in Bangkok is HUGE, and my feelings of being a pro traveler were slipping away as I went past an area that said "Visa upon arrival" that I ran back to from the Immigration area thinking "wait -- I thought I didn't need a visa!?!" and panicked further when the US wasn't on the the list of nationalities that could get a visa upon arrival. It wasn't on the list because persons with US passports don't need a visa, as I already knew, but had instantly doubted myself about. So I went back to immigration without filling out an entry card, went and filled it out, went back, needed to supply more information than I had on the form, then made it through worried that all the other passengers from my flight would have already collected their bags and that mine would go someplace with unclaimed bags or just dissapear in general. This was only a slight worry, somehow over the time of this trip I have become much less attached to just about everything I am traveling with, and the thought of losing my bag is kind of more of a annoyance at the idea of having to shop for things that I would need to replace. There were so many baggage claim areas that I went to the board to see which crowd I was supposed to join, but out of my tiredness I could not find my flight information and luggage belt number, the board was switching between English and Thai too fast and there were far too many flights listed. It was hopeless, I just started laughing at how impossible it would be for me to ever find out anything on that board and at how I was at a 180 from my cocky-super-traveler thoughts from earlier. I was laughing though, so little can really get to me at this point which is still kind of amazing when I stop to think about it.

So I walked along and of course found just where I needed to be, and about 40 minutes after landing the luggage still hadn't shown up so I didn't have to worry about my bag dissapearing from the luggage area. When I did get my bag I got out of the airport and into the heat. It is the hot/dry season in Thailand, I know I had planned on following summer around the world, but this might be a bit overboard. Taking a taxi from the airport to the area that I was going to stay in was much easier than I thought it would be as far as getting from point A to point B, but dificult in that I was instantly realizing I didn't know a single word in Thai, I am another farong/foreigner here being taxied around. I had arranged to stay with someone that responded to my globalfreeloaders request. I was really lucky that I could stay with her, she planned to be out of the country at the time and when I was in Canberra Australia two days before leaving for Thailand I woke up with all of my thoughts wrapped around not knowing where I would be staying in Bangkok and the fact that I would be arriving at 10pm Thailand time, so I got on the internet to look up a guesthouse Sarah Spence had told me about when I was in Omak asking her questions about thailand, and there in my inbox was a message from Ruth asking if I was still coming and saying she would be in town. Ruth met me outside of a supermarket that I was dropped off at. Sitting and waiting for her I realized again how little some things that would maybe stir a negative reaction in me (the heat, the less pleasant smells, the big rat scurrying past) don't really phase me anymore.

The one thing I have heard over and over again about Thailand is not to take a tuk tuk, and the first thing that Ruth and I did was catch a ride in one back to her place. When I was in the taxi I had this kind of strange feeling like I would be thrown from the taxi and scrape along the pavement, an irrational fear for being in a taxi, but a possible tuk tuk premonition... I made a mental note to avoid tuk tuks.