After we got back to Chiang Mai on Tuesday night (36 hours of hiking/motorcycling/sleeping on the bamboo floor of a hut in 100 degrees/boat riding/truck riding), we had about 24-hours to do our final clean out. The first stop in CM was the bus station, where we rented a scooter for 24 hours (we sold our scooter before we left for India). Next stop was The Salad Concept, a delicious restaurant that caters to the vegan/vegetarian crowd with huge piles of organic greens and choose-your-own-toppings for the splurge prices of 100 baht or so ($3). We ate salad AND an in-season smoothie of strawberries and mango AND each bought a dessert - we really splurged on that meal, and after a month of anticipating it, it was taste-bud bliss!
Next was home - to our condo - to start washing our clothes from the jungle and scrub our shoes and backpacks. 1.5 hours of scrubbing in the shower later with dish detergent and a scrub brush, and most things were pretty much back to a normal hue. After scrubbing myself almost an equal amount of time, we hung up our clothes, rigged up a fan system to blow on the backpacks, and fell into bed for the first horizontal-on-a-mattresses-surface sleep we'd had in a month.
We packed up our stuff to bring to Europe (a backpack for each of us, my purse, and a little day-pack satchel for Gabe to carry), boxed up a box to ship to New Zealand, tried to straighten/clean our apartment a bit, and hit the road on our scooter to head back to the bus station to return the scooter and catch our bus out.
The bus was overnight (6:30pm to 5am) down to Bangkok. We've done this route a few times, and our tickets were the cheapest yet (488 baht each - about $15), and the experience was probably the most ghetto yet, but hey, we made it! Once we got into Bangkok, we strapped on our packs and walked the few kilometers through a park to get to the metro station. When it opened at 6:30am, we rode it out to the airport.
Our flight leaving Bangkok was delayed, which was a blessing because we got a meal voucher (800 baht total for a meal at Burger King! We felt like we'd won the jackpot!) and had plenty of time to sort through a potentially complicated immigration situation leaving the Kingdom of Thailand. We thought we might be charged a fee (possibly banned from reentering the Kingdom for a time), but neither happened, which we were praising the Lord about!
Our 11 hour flight departed 3 hours late, and we realized that one of the reason our tickets to Venice had been so cheap initially was because we had purchased the "basic" fare - which meant no food service. I'm sure there was probably information informing us of that fact when I bought the tickets or received the confirmation or something, but somehow I missed it. The stomach pains of hunger abated about 6 hours in and I slept the last 5 hours, and the 2 free glasses of orange juice and one free tea we were able to procure got us through without purchasing overpriced airline food!
Upon arriving in Cologne, we found out that the last flight out for Venice had already departed, so our airline put us up in a hotel near the airport with breakfast included, paid for transportation to and from the airport, and gave us a dinner voucher. We had a delightful dinner with a Hungarian gal - probably a few years younger than us - that had just spent 4 months in Asia. Since everyone had been on the same flight and flooded the hotel restaurant for dinner at 10:30pm when we all arrived at the hotel, it was fun to have the shared suffering to bond over. Our flight the next day left at 2:30pm, so we had a free morning to sleep in a little and then walk around the neighborhood we were in. It was beautiful, albeit cold, and Gabe loved his little glimpse into German life.
We had a taxi provided to take us to the airport, and our taxi driver proved to be a delightful addition to our German experience. He was a Syrian immigrant (30 years ago) that shared more about how he feels regarding the situation in Syria when we asked him questions. He was also able to talk about the local industry and the historic places we were going through. We hit a major traffic jam that delayed is about an hour getting to the airport, but we were glad to have the extra hour to visit with George - we saw photos of his family and we were complimented on our English ("where are you from? I can understand you so well!" When we told him we were from the USA, he remarked that he thought we went to school at Oxford or something because we pronounce things to clearly. Gabe and i realized later that our English has changed to be much more ESL friendly over the last year - we choose international words and speak slowly and clearly these days!). We talked about what it means to be a Christian in response to poverty and this tragedy in Syria, and we discussed knives and German products. It was delightful.
Our flight to Venice was smooth (another conversation with the money change person who converted the last of our Thai baht into Euros reinforced that Germans find our English easy to comprehend), and we walked the 6km to our Airbnb place in Venezia Mestre from the airport because neither of us could stomach the idea of paying €8 each for a 15 minute bus ride. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we enjoyed getting to walk through wheat fields, although the road was very narrow at times and the cars very fast! The packs on our back counted as our "weight lifting" regiment for the day!
Although long, the journey was full of surprise blessings along the way!
- Dani
Next was home - to our condo - to start washing our clothes from the jungle and scrub our shoes and backpacks. 1.5 hours of scrubbing in the shower later with dish detergent and a scrub brush, and most things were pretty much back to a normal hue. After scrubbing myself almost an equal amount of time, we hung up our clothes, rigged up a fan system to blow on the backpacks, and fell into bed for the first horizontal-on-a-mattresses-surface sleep we'd had in a month.
We packed up our stuff to bring to Europe (a backpack for each of us, my purse, and a little day-pack satchel for Gabe to carry), boxed up a box to ship to New Zealand, tried to straighten/clean our apartment a bit, and hit the road on our scooter to head back to the bus station to return the scooter and catch our bus out.
The bus was overnight (6:30pm to 5am) down to Bangkok. We've done this route a few times, and our tickets were the cheapest yet (488 baht each - about $15), and the experience was probably the most ghetto yet, but hey, we made it! Once we got into Bangkok, we strapped on our packs and walked the few kilometers through a park to get to the metro station. When it opened at 6:30am, we rode it out to the airport.
Our flight leaving Bangkok was delayed, which was a blessing because we got a meal voucher (800 baht total for a meal at Burger King! We felt like we'd won the jackpot!) and had plenty of time to sort through a potentially complicated immigration situation leaving the Kingdom of Thailand. We thought we might be charged a fee (possibly banned from reentering the Kingdom for a time), but neither happened, which we were praising the Lord about!
Our 11 hour flight departed 3 hours late, and we realized that one of the reason our tickets to Venice had been so cheap initially was because we had purchased the "basic" fare - which meant no food service. I'm sure there was probably information informing us of that fact when I bought the tickets or received the confirmation or something, but somehow I missed it. The stomach pains of hunger abated about 6 hours in and I slept the last 5 hours, and the 2 free glasses of orange juice and one free tea we were able to procure got us through without purchasing overpriced airline food!
Upon arriving in Cologne, we found out that the last flight out for Venice had already departed, so our airline put us up in a hotel near the airport with breakfast included, paid for transportation to and from the airport, and gave us a dinner voucher. We had a delightful dinner with a Hungarian gal - probably a few years younger than us - that had just spent 4 months in Asia. Since everyone had been on the same flight and flooded the hotel restaurant for dinner at 10:30pm when we all arrived at the hotel, it was fun to have the shared suffering to bond over. Our flight the next day left at 2:30pm, so we had a free morning to sleep in a little and then walk around the neighborhood we were in. It was beautiful, albeit cold, and Gabe loved his little glimpse into German life.
We had a taxi provided to take us to the airport, and our taxi driver proved to be a delightful addition to our German experience. He was a Syrian immigrant (30 years ago) that shared more about how he feels regarding the situation in Syria when we asked him questions. He was also able to talk about the local industry and the historic places we were going through. We hit a major traffic jam that delayed is about an hour getting to the airport, but we were glad to have the extra hour to visit with George - we saw photos of his family and we were complimented on our English ("where are you from? I can understand you so well!" When we told him we were from the USA, he remarked that he thought we went to school at Oxford or something because we pronounce things to clearly. Gabe and i realized later that our English has changed to be much more ESL friendly over the last year - we choose international words and speak slowly and clearly these days!). We talked about what it means to be a Christian in response to poverty and this tragedy in Syria, and we discussed knives and German products. It was delightful.
Our flight to Venice was smooth (another conversation with the money change person who converted the last of our Thai baht into Euros reinforced that Germans find our English easy to comprehend), and we walked the 6km to our Airbnb place in Venezia Mestre from the airport because neither of us could stomach the idea of paying €8 each for a 15 minute bus ride. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we enjoyed getting to walk through wheat fields, although the road was very narrow at times and the cars very fast! The packs on our back counted as our "weight lifting" regiment for the day!
Although long, the journey was full of surprise blessings along the way!
- Dani
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