The trip to Bangkok

So my trip didn't even remotely start out as planned. Somehow Sandy and I managed to sleep through BOTH alarms that we had set to wake us up at 4:30AM so I could get downtown to catch my shuttle to Seattle airport at 6AM. My dad woked us up with a phone call at 6:05AM, 5 minutes AFTER my bus left from downtown!! Missing an exam or a flight because I slept through an alarm has always been one of my worst nightmares, luckily it didn't turn out to be so bad because we had a chance to catch up with the shuttle in Cloverdale (south of Vancouver) just before it crossed the border. Sandy and I jumped in the car and took off (not having time to shower was also a great addition to the beginning of a 27hr journey), with Dad at Mission Impossible ground control calling us every few minutes for progress reports and predict whether or not we'd make it. Lucky for me my brother has one of the best senses of humour of anyone I've ever met so we were laughing and joking the whole way, which helped ease my sense of being a complete twit/asshole for having gotten myself into this situation. In the end, we pulled into the bus stop at EXACTLY the same moment as the bus, I grabbed my bag and hopped on!! As Sandy aptly put it, there was "no time for tears" (no tears= a new thing for me as most of you know). I slept all the way to Seattle and my experience at SeaTac was typically American and disorganized, but I made it onto the place to Narita, Japan. I was expecting to feel like I was really in JAPAN when I got there, like Harajuku girls and blinking lights and noises and little happy people running about, but Narita could seriously have been Vancouver and I wouldn't have known a difference. I had some great sushi, definitely rivaled that of Vancouver, so I can technically SAY I had sushi in Tokyo even if it wasn't very authentic. Getting on the plane to Bangkok was the first time my body starting questioning what time it really was, especially since I didn't sleep on the 10hr flight to Japan. I slept all the way to Bangkok, only waking to enjoy the ON BOARD food service- flying Air Canada for so long has conditioned me to feel that you really have to appreciate free hot food on planes! We arrived in Bangkok at 11:30pm and even at that time all I could sense was the oppressive, humid, fragrant, HEAT.....