It’s our godforsaken right to be rove, rove, rove, rove’d! - September 30, 2010

pit PIIITT!  These are happy words for me, crying words for Sophia.  We cooked today with San, not that you could justify calling it that.  I cut up a few veggies.  Not that that is accurate either.  I diced tomatoes.  And then I watched San go to work on a number of other vegetables, all of which we quizzed her on, trying to learn some Lao.  Sophia wrote down some phonetics and paired them with English words.  The food is good here.  Jacqui continues to rave about organic and I am embracing it more than I would at home.  I’ll tell you why: It’s affordable.  Almost everything is organic, and it’s not produced as a marketing/price discrimination gimmick like it is at home.  Everything is fresh.

Pit means pepper or chili, and can be likened to Thai peppers in the U.S. aka spicy.  Pit also seems to mean spicy.  San doesn’t speak English, she says hello and okay.  She rambles off sentences and I try to listen but it all goes right over my head.  I think I’m learning, but at this point I’m clueless.  I smile back.

I’m not going to lie to you—San is my new favorite person—aside from making fish wrapped and steamed in banana leaves, she cut toothpicks in half!  After a delicious meal I literally passed back out.  I warned you, I was going to be underslept today.  Waking up an hour later I was completely disorientated, and sticky.  The temperature here keeps going up, the stick meter is maxed out.

I’ve realized I’m still settling in, despite my desire to get out and about, I’ve been perfectly comfortable around home, still getting the swing of things around here and my sinuses are finally healing from the plane, so I don’t walk around snorting, sniffling, and sneezing everywhere I go.  As if I needed more attention.

We left at 6:30 to get noodles at a restaurant on the way to a concert at the French center along the Avenue Lane Xiang.  After driving around and looking for somewhere to park, we walked down the street until Jacqui found something she liked.  The whole place was outdoors and a guitarist played at the back of the restaurant, past the bar.  He played Lao, Vietnamese and Thai songs, Jacqui told us.  We ordered pad thai, which came out with very skinny noodles, it was delicious nonetheless.  I poured about half of the dish of crushed, dried peppers onto mine.  I figure there were two reasons; the first was to look as least falang as possible and the second because I actually like it spicy.

It’s funny thinking about that.  We were talking about it yesterday and I recalled the first time I experienced something truly hot.  I was in first grade and I went to my friend Sim’s house, I was staying the night and we had tandoori chicken for dinner.  His parents both moved here from India, so they ate hot.  I remember cutting a piece of my chicken, putting it into my mouth and immediately spitting it out, thinking to myself that it was inedible.  I look around, and everyone is pleasantly enjoying their chicken, Sim has already eaten a full leg and I’m taking baby-bites of mine.  Sim’s dad must have asked me if I didn’t like it, to which I responded that it was too hot, at which point he told me that I had to eat it, and that I should enjoy it because it would put hair on my chest.  I was six, and I remember thinking, I don’t want hair on my chest. He was right though, Sim is a hairy beast compared to me.  Straight love though.

Anyway, we’re at this restaurant, surrounded by tables full of young Lao men, almost all are in their 20s or early 30s, and only 1 table has any women.  I ordered a beer, a BeerLao, to enjoy with my meal.  Jacqui started storytime, recanting the upsurge of alcoholism that plagued the country in the early 1990s and has recently started to subside.  Now guys, tell me this isn’t the life:

You leave work at 4 (that’s when work ends here), and you meet up with all your buddy’s at your favorite watering hole.  You all sit around the table, spitting bull, having a grand time and emptying your belly of laughter, filling it up with beer.  Meanwhile, this hot waitress, who seems to be hovering around your table keeps the booze flowing.  This continues until about 730, when you realize it’s about time you ought to get home.  It’s been dark now for two hours and you need to sober up before you hop on your motorbike.  You pull out your wallet and all you find is 20,000 kip (that’s about $2.25).  That would have been plenty for the first 5 rounds, but you were drinking Johnnie Walker then, before you moved on to the beer.  You and your five buddies rack up a bill of about 850,000 kip (do the math).  And, oh, shit, you need that 20,000 to put 3 more liters of gas into your bike, top that baby off!  Luckily you have a perfect solution.  You take out your cell phone and with your fat-pad hands, swollen with liquor attempt to navigate through your contacts until you find your wife’s cell phone number.  You don’t call her.  You write her name, number, and work address on the bill and it goes on her tab.  This isn’t the first time either, you did that last night and the night before.

Thinking nothing much of anything, you hop on your bike, missing the kick the first time round, and nailing the second time.  Having already stomped the pedal shift you take off at a lurch, squealing.  Weaving through traffic you finally turn off the main road, park your bike and stumble up to the front door.  You knock, dreading the response you’re about to get, the second she opens that door.  It opens.  Oops, wrong woman, that’s you mia noi (small wife).  You don’t have a choice but to stick around a little bit, exchanging pleasantries and whatnot.  When you finally get home around 10, your kids are asleep and your wife just stares at you blankly until you walk past her to the table where you begin to eat what she has made for you.  It’s cold, and you’re pissed.  Fill in the rest.  Jacqui told us a story very similar to this, explaining it’s not an uncommon thing even nowadays.  Some restaurants have begun to deny serving drunks, or people who are moderately intoxicated.

We finished dinner at 7:40, but stayed until 7:50 because the singer had begun playing American pop-rock.  It started with Hotel California and progressed to Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours,” hence the title of this post.  Sophia and I just smiled at each other containing our laughter, thinking about the stereotype that was being fulfilled.  Asian’s can’t pronounce ‘L’s.  I tried to sing along but struggled focusing, and despite his inadequacies in the pronunciation department, his voice was great.  Mine is awful.  If I’m being modest.

We hoped to catch the tail-end of the concert, which, by Jacqui’s description was a traditional improvisational folk music with guitar and band.  It sounded phenomenal.  I will never know.  We passed by the center on the left and Jacqui pulled up to the light to pull a u-turn.  I was hanging out the window with y 35mm f/1.8 out taking pictures of the Lao reconstruction of the Arc de Triumph and the tuk tuks when whistled started blaring from the sidewalk.  I looked over and two men in uniform started yelling at us.  I looked around and ducked back into the car.  Jacqui had pulled forward and I heard her say, ”Is it green, can I go?” I found the signal, which showed a green light above a red left turn arrow.  “No, not yet.” Sophia said.  I looked out the window again, and saw one of the men making his way on foot across the street.  With complete disregard for traffic he walked around the back of Jacqui’s car, in the middle of the road and to her window.  He asked for her license and other papers.  Apparently she had run the redlight, by putting the nose of her car over the white line of the intersection.  She pulled off on the other side of the road once she could get off and disappeared to go discuss her upcoming ticket.  Reportedly, she was going to be detained and her car impounded, her passengers forced to walk or tuk tuk wherever they were headed.  Meanwhile, a superior officer, an old friend walks up to the two officers and Jacqui.  Recognizing here he lets her go after a brief, recent life history lesson.  Jacqui rolls deep.  Aka her swagger is tight.

This was random, and not much to it but the story of my day.  Learning things everyday, and enjoying this time I have had to relax out of the sun.

Sticky, and I'm not talking about rice - September 29, 2010

Today was a mixture of a number of things.  To begin with the senses: bright light, fanciful colors, foreign noises, sweat—running, dripping sweat—dog shit, cilantro, and body odor.  All of which I don’t expect to change.  I hope that the short sounds making up words and sentences become less foreign, more familiar, and I plan to make an effort at understanding.  I walked across a pile of fish bones, regurgitated by the dog while I had slept, and made my way upstairs.

Breakfast lasted about 2 and a half hours and was earlier than I, on average, eat breakfast-by about 3 hours.  Jacqui made oatmeal, the wholesome texture and taste interrupted pleasantly by pops and gushes of golden and purple raisins.  She told stories the night before of oats coming into the country years ago, when there was somewhat of a food shortage and people inane with their utility.  Not that I was stereotyping but I couldn’t resist the urge to put the two together.  Jacqui is a Quaker, so I laughed inside as I enjoyed the breakfast she’d made for us all.  Tu Hkawng, a Kachin, from Myanmar, has been living with us here as well.  We’ve learned much about the history of Myanmar, or Burma as it seems to be called.  I will not go into the history lesson, but Burma is the English name given to the country based on the majority of the population being ethnic Burmese, who inhabit most of the urban centers of the country, Yangon and Rangoon included.  Other regions are made up of four other major ethnicities, each of which have a number of dialects pertaining to subcultures within.  Myanmar is the appropriate name for the country because it refers to the actual landmass, and does not alienate the majority of the country, made up by ethnic groups other than Burmese.  Tu Kwang is from up north, in Kachin state.

More importantly there is incredible tension in the region.  They are about to have their first election in 20 years.  The country has been run by a military dictatorship since then.  There is great corruption, fueling poverty, drug abuse, and a declining economy.  In the 1980s, the country was a hotspot in the region, with the best education, best universities, high-tech industries, and all the makings of a country the likes of Singapore.  In 1990, during the last election, a woman by the name of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese woman won in a landslide victory as a member of the National League for Democracy.  However, she was never allowed to take office and the Senior General Than Shwe and the military took over.  The country has been in a bad way ever since.  I urge you to read more about it.  Also looke up the Saffron Revolition, which took place in 2007, where consumer energy prices were skyrocketed by country officials, causes Monks to protest.  Hundreds of thousands of people joined the monks in the streets and soon the military had to take action to avoid losing their position of power.  Things escalated quickly and the military started killing monks, not only to the point where it caused massive revolt amongst the people, but until they were quelled.  A vicious period in the history of SEA.  And an interesting way to wake up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_general_election,_2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron_Revolution

As the day progressed, I read more of The Land of Smiles which I’m almost through now.  I don’t have much to reflect on it, just that it’s an interesting read and the author, T.C. Huo successfully makes you feel uncomfortable and unsure.  I’ll give it to Sophia tomorrow and we’ll see what she has to say about it.  I did some research on cause of death, disease prevalence and learned about the population here.  I wonder if, with a translator, I can teach CPR at the free youth health clinic.  Ischemic heart disease accounted for 8.2% of deaths in 2002, according the WHO.  It’s prevalence bows in comparison to the astronomical problems we have in the U.S.  Much of this difference is a result of weaker health services.  Jacqui told us at dinner of her experience with the hospital, and that when she moved here 40 years ago there were some 59 doctors in country.  She explained that most of these professionals were hardly that at all, instead they were more akin to specially trained college graduates.  Anyway, life expectancy at birth here is 64 years, a good 14 years younger than our fat asses in the U.S.  If you’re not dying of heart disease, cancer, or Alzheimer’s, it’s something else.  Nonetheless, I hope I might have a conversation with some people there to see if that would be useful.  I wear my EMT tank as I write this.

Sophia and I made our way from the middle of town deeper into the middle of town.  Jacqui brought us to just near the riverfront to where she was going to the bank.  It was time to be farangs.  I wore it proudly: baseball hat, camera bag, my D90 hanging from my left shoulder, gripped in my right hand and Wally’s old FE strap wrapped and dangling from my wrist.  I had the 18-105mm on the D90 and the FE’s stock 50mm f/1.8, with 23 exposures left in the roll and 16 gb on my card, which comes out to about 1,100 raw exposures.  We first made our way through town with one word on the tongue, sím, meaning SIM card.  This was our first and only errand.  We walked into the hotel across the street from the bank and asked there, they whipped out a few Lao Tel SIM cards that seemed overpriced, we asked where we could find tigo, and walked back under the sun and stick.  On the way, we walked back past a tuk tuk driver who seemed anxious to take us on a ride, and thought maybe we’d change our minds, or he might change them for us.  We didn’t.  I exchanged some US dollars for some Lao kip at 8,106 to 1.  We kept walking along what appeared to be a new riverfront park until there was a tigo Lao poster outside an Indian/Malaysian restaurant.  We enquired about sím and the hostess responded, “SEEEEEEM?” a crescendo of unilingual technical terminology, made blunt and obvious.  I nodded, “sím” and she whipped out a bag of blue cards, all adorned with “tigo Lao.”  I opened the back of my BlackBerry, removed the battery, my AT&T sím and implanted the new one.  I re-encased It and waited for it to start up, which was about two minutes.  A friendly guy, about 5’7,” dark skin, t-shirt and khaki pants had joined us, the in-house waiter slash sím guru.  He looked like Sean Brachvogel a friend from Santa Clara, just a little skinnier and a lot darker, and clearly more adept with the food/phone combo.  We typed in the SIM pin and then it asked me for the MEP code.  No such thing was listed, so I typed in the PUK, the only remaining number I had been given, save the telephone number. The textbox disappeared and then reappeared with the same command “Please enter the MEP code” this time adding (7 left).  I won’t speak too kindly of my interpretation skills, but I was no idiot, the PUK wasn’t right.  I tried other things before my new friend Sean decided we would try the card in his phone.  He pulled out his pink goliath and it worked without a hitch.  Then we returned to mine.  Still no luck.  The most frustrating part of the whole experience was having to wait the two minutes every time we reset my phone, which was at least five.  We had no worries about not being able to call Jacqui to coordinate a ride or generally having any semblance of telecommunications technology with us.  Despite my attempts to avoid cliché, it was liberating.  Just me and Soph in our own little world in a much bigger one.

tuk tuks on break

We walked by the Nanphou Fontane to the Swedish (as we had been told) Bakery, which was actually a Scandinavian bakery so that Sophia could get some vegetarian food.  There were whities crawling all over this place and I wanted to get out, but it was nice to sit and people watch.  I pressed a few shutters while we were there, had a bite of Sophia’s “Swedish cake,” which was a gluten-free mix of chocolate torte, brownie, and German chocolate cake.  My compliments.  Not weighed down, we left after talking to a nice couple from the UK, the first time in Laos we used the word cousin, that’s English for “non-romantically, but nonetheless related.”

Cousin Sophia

We made our way up and down a few more blocks, clicked a few more shutters, saw a regulation NBA basketball hoop that was possibly smuggled into the county through China, some baby’s riding motorbikes, and some other fantastic things.  I was chased by a rabid dog, and pranced down the busy street to avoid hospitalization, sacrificing my farang dignity.  The owners laughed and watched.  Fuck calling this thing off.  Another dog watched as he sat on his ass, maybe his olfactory neurons weren’t properly tuned.  A few sickly old women and a baby sat outside a pagoda and were selling bags full of quail eggs.  These quails didn’t have puffs like Snookie or the American quail I see hopping across hot streets in Eastern Washington during the summer months.

Quail Eggs



Quail



We were out of town now, but traffic unappeased and the buildings seemed to shrink while really they had just drawn away from then street, the perfectly situated trees with their bases treated above gone now, less shade, less foreboding civilization.  We passed the elephant carwash, and I immediately missed home.  That passed, sure to resurface.  Random, indigenous trees mixed in with homes and UNICEF made shade for us as we walked on grass and concrete.  After two miles we recognized our surroundings, the turnoff to home.  We turned right, toward the river, making our way past an innocent and panting Australian Sheppard in the grass.  As though we hadn’t known, the sun was setting over the river, and gorgeous.  Orange-yellow reflected on the water out from under the clouds and quickly gave way to red and magenta.  A foreground swarm of large, red dragonflies glimmered above bushes on the embankment, which made its way down to the fish-hatching cages at the bank and a few hundreds of meters across, Thailand was being burning under the falling sun.  Soon it was dark, six o’clock.

Catch that Baby!

I finally showered, my first time since being in Laos, it felt good.  I love cold showers.  I even didn’t mind the drip of low water-pressure, just to get all of my grime off of me.  I sweat for an hour after, it was still hot.  If there’s one thing I have chosen to ignore, its Jacqui’s hopeful and matter-of-factly ‘it will get cooler soon’s.  Soon couldn’t come any quicker.  Seriously though, it’s very nice here, just really hot for a white-ass farang such as myself. At least Sophia has the advantage of being a guidette.  She hates it when she is called that.  But c’mon! Put two and two together—Italian + lives in Jersey = Guidette.  Sorry Soph, time to face the facts.  Don’t be jealous that you got swaggajacked by Snickers.

This has gone on long enough.  Dinner was good and I’m about to pass out after pressing the export to flickr button on my laptop, it’s 10:30.  The sun will wake me at 6, so I will technically be underslept.  Life is hard.

September 28 - Sabai di, Lao

Our Royal accomodations in the Kingdom of Thailand.

The night between flights.

My eyes opened first this morning at 4 am.  Don’t know what time that is in Seattle, but I have a feeling that as I write this it might still be September 27^th.  I struggled for an extra composite 30 minutes until 6:30 when our wake-up call came in.  I had been too lazy to see the sunrise over the airport, but if I were in the business of watching sunrises I would have died of sleep deprivation 5 years ago.  I rolled out of bed when Sophia came out of the bathroom. Having done the math I had amassed a grand total of 3 hours of sleep to add to my in-flight dozing.

Sophia had said the night before, impatient to get to our Novotel (for you westerners, that’s a big hotel chain) that I could take pictures the next morning.  I’m glad I didn’t listen because as beautiful as this place is during the day, with sunlight streaming in from every angle, it was prettier at night.  You’d think so too if you’re a cool colors kind of person.  Walking into the terminal, a mural of some must-be-important Thai figure overlooked the entrance.  Oh yeah, that must be the King.  Long Live the His Majesty.  Finding security was easier than it at first seemed it might be and soon we were searching for food.  Correction, I was searching for food.  Sophia grabbed a coffee at Starbucks in the American wing, and I sat down to a nice spicy plate of stir fried chicken and basil, a fried egg and sticky rice.  I’m not the kind of person that needs my breakfast foods.  Spice on the tongue puts a fire in your heart.  Something like that, right?  I was pleasantly surprised to see Sophia enjoy a bite without crying about her taste buds O.D.ing on capsaicin.

We made our way through the cement palace, taking a few pictures along the way and boarded our twin prop plane straight from the tarmac at 09:15.

Starbucks



Delicious!

 

Learning Lao





























Leaving on the plane for less humid Lao.
See what I mean?! This is about five seconds after I took my cap off! 



Emerging from the rear bathroom, I planted my forehead firmly into a low ceiling, right in front of the stewardess, who I must admit, may have stolen some of my attention from my general surroundings. That wasn’t the first time that had happened in that 2 minute period.  Despite the small fuselage, the ride was very comfortable, though the flap that was supposed to close over the left landing gear did exactly that.  I don’t mean close.  I mean flap back and forth, dragging us slowly but surely westbound off-course at 30,000 ft and 500 mph.  I know why those are called that now.  Disembarkment went about as smoothly as my bathroom trip.  Conscientious and cautious of the low hanging ceiling around the bathroom and the fold-down steps across from it, I ducked.  And with a bag on each shoulder I banged my left on the doorjam and nearly tripped down the stairs. 

Sophia Touching Down.

Sabai di, Lao.  As my father once said, “My Laotian is very good.”  If you know a Krengel, you know that means I know jack shit of Laotian.  Removing my lens cap I was pleased to see my skylight filter stay dry, crisp, and clean.  The humidity had dissipated, but the heat seemed comparable nonetheless, but allowed for better thermoregulation.  Yes, I do think that way.  Beautiful rolling clouds opened up to blue sky, and I could hardly keep my eyes open it was all so bright.  Don’t believe me?  Look down.

Squinting

Cousins on the Tarmac

Tarmac HDR

This is a joke, right?

After clearing customs Sophia and I made our way down and outside, past a number of solicitous taxi drivers.  Jacqui, our ride, and more importantly our host, who I have already amassed a number of endearing adjectives for was not yet there.  So we headed back inside, past the taxi drivers, feeling like fools, and stared around blankly.  We knew we could do nothing but wait, yet our tired brains raced, pushing our bodies to wander around.  After a few minutes of mindlessness we gathered ourselves and headed back past the taxi drivers and sat down on the curb, waiting.  Some Londoners asked us if $88 US sounded like a reasonable fare into the middle of town: the quote they had received.  I thought I’d read it should be $40 and was about 30 km from the airport.  That was completely wrong, but would have saved them a portion, I hope they didn’t agree to a $40 fare.



After I met Jacqui, and we were on our way to her house, bags in the trunk, camera at the ready, I learned that the center of town, in fact, was 3 km from the airport.  That’s an expensive taxi ride.  Every few blocks a pagoda, set back from the street added more color to the vibrant spots that brightened up the cement buildings in the center of town.  Maybe it’s demeaning to refer to it as a town, but Vientiane, the sprawling cityscape that it appears to be in maps, doesn’t get much higher than 20 meters off the ground.  At over 200,000, it is a city nonetheless, but not by modern, urban-American standards.  My home for the next, foreseeable, 3 months.



Bones, hips they looked like, lined the sidewalk.  Sidewalk, again, should be redefined, or deconstructed, to mean nothing more than the walking space on the side of the road before a fence or a building.  Although, in some place, like in the center of town, it is paved well.  The store we were at was at a three way intersection east of downtown.  I thought maybe there was a butcher shop here, because of the specimens I’d walked through to find the storefront.  Refrigerators lined the path to the inside, and were full of things from yogurt, butter and other dairy to shrink-wrapped meats, cured and sliced or raw.  The first thing I noticed inside was the basket of French baguettes.  Little-known-fact about little-known-Lao: famous for its French bread.  This store was, as Jacqui told us, the place to go for western foods, and the other store, where San shops, for its Laotian.  Either way everything was organic.  San, by the way is Jacqui and Roger’s helper, she cooks, cleans, and, judging by the first meal she’s made, generally balls-out-of-control.  Respect.  Did I mention I can’t wait to start learning the way around a Lao kitchen.  I didn’t think I needed to.  If there’s one thing that can bridge a language barrier, it’s food.

This is ending abruptly.  More to come.

East up the Mekong

P.S. to everyone but my mother:  during lunch I got bit by my first mosquito.  Jacqui says the day ones carry Dengue and have tiger-striped legs.  I didn’t see this one, but I feel fine thus far.  If I stop posting three days from now you’ll know why.





Day 1 - September 26-27, 2010

  

Sophia headed to Customs: Bangkok, HDR



21 hours of travel later… 1 day 11 hours with time change, at 00:10 I walked into my hotel room in Bangkok.  My sinuses are run completely dry, despite otherwise pleasant and comfortable plane rides.  The Bangkok airport, Suvarnabhumi is a beautiful post-modern architectural feat, the grey stone and chrome lit against the night by halogen and blue running lights.  We found our shuttle easily after Sophia, who I pushed in front of me, asked where our shuttle was.  There was a slight language hiccup, but their English was better than our Thai.  The extent of mine is a number of memorized compounds such as pad thai, pad see eew, and the more simple panang.  Is it sad that English is so universal that I have made little attempt to learn any of the sovereign languages of the places I will go?  I shouldn’t admit that.



37 hours ago I sat at gate 10 in the north satellite at SeaTac, watching the Falcons try to beat the Saints from the giant tube television hanging from the ceiling.  As much as I love football (and baseball), I hoped it would be the last breath of American culture I would have for a while, apart from the two pounds of Swedish Fish I had stuffed into one of my two backpacks, oh! and the $40 of magazines I just bought, but none of those are decidedly “American” per se.  I also would have to grapple with the reality that everywhere I would go for the next three months, as hard as I might try (save daily trips to the tanning salon with The Situation and Pauly D to become dark), I would be American.  I just prayed that I wouldn’t see any goddamn Bud ads.

Much of this really didn’t strike me at the time—I was more impatient to get into the air than anything else, not too sentimental about leaving my parents and my brother still in high school who I’d been living at home with, or my friends.  College spliced out my missing gene; I guess you could say I’m not particularly prone to any semblance of separation anxiety.  Which is not to be confused with a lack of fondness for homo sapiens.  I spent my last night with my good friend Scott and met some of his friends.  Together, we used to joke that we met in the Swedish nursery—chances were high—and we did ask people “don’t please not come” to our 10 year birthday party slash whirligigfest.  All this is to say, to illustrate really, the importance of the people in my life—the people I am leaving for the time being to see a part of the world that has always struck my interest.

The few transient immersions I’ve had to Latin American countries were always goal-oriented, and any worries I had somewhat assuaged by a decent but recently declining Spanish language proficiency.  Everyday someone asks me why I am going to Laos.  I’ve said to travel and volunteer and a friend of mine told someone I was going to do photography-that’s certainly true, but I don’t have a canned answer. To be honest, I’ll tell you when I get back.  This trip is about to call on the parts of me I have maybe come in contact with once or twice, I want to learn—about people and how I interact with them.  This trip is not goal-oriented in the American sense of the word, that’s what I’m trying to say, and that, I guess is hard to relate to people, but also hard for me to relate with.  That is exactly the point, sorry, the goal.



After a few friendly words with
a new friend, scarfed down



Capt. Dan Mueller flew me over the Pacific to where I crept up on Sophia, waiting at gate 36 in Narita.  We roamed the international terminals before returning to our gate, next to which seemed to have the most appropriate culinary offerings.  I ordered a medium Sapporro and a bowl of mushroom udon, grabbed my (draft!) Sapporro and headed to the corner of the restaurant, where Sophia had hidden herself at a counter overlooking the tarmac through giant plane-glass windows bolted into steel.  Two seats away Yusef, on his way to Taiwan looked like he was up for some friendly conversation.  He was.  He had turned his back on medicine after considering its political environment in the United States.  From our conversation, which lasted until his flight boarded, I grew very fond of him, seeming well-rounded and well-educated, and a hard worker.  I scarfed the rest of my Udon, shared a few random inappropriate remarks with Sophia for a giggle and we boarded our plane to Bangkok.

Despite having been fed two meals on the plane to Tokyo, a snack, and a healthy serving of trashy American action-thrillers, list including but not limited to The Losers (with Zoe Saldana!) and The A-Team (with Jessica Biel!!!),  I was insatiable.  My stomach growled incessantly and I could feel the hydrochloric acid building up slowly.  We got another meal on between Tokyo and Bongkok. Tangent: When I took the wrapper off, something about its texture and the way it crackled as I crunched it into a ball reminded me of when I was little and they served McDonald’s hamburgers on the plane.  Regardless, the vegetarian pasta they served was mediocre at best.  And thousand island dressing, I have one punctuation for that. ?.

Walking through the Bangkok airport, its novelty was apparent; it was crisp, clean, and shiny new.  English subscript everywhere guided us easily through immigration to our bags and through customs to where I began this rant.  I left out one thing at the beginning though: I took my lens cap off as we walked outside to document for myself the grandeur of the international-travel-hub-turned-shopping-mall.  I looked through viewfinder and saw nothing.  Not the black nothingness of raising a covered SLR to your eye; fog.  The heat and humidity struck me the moment I’d walked outside, but it wasn’t until this dilemma that I thought, This really could be an issue.