Trip Home

So, the trip home was nothing short of an adventure.
We hopped into a cab around 2 and headed to Krabi International Airport. We got there plenty early, and had a seat in the basement to wait for our plane. We sat in the sweltering heat, waiting for our boarding call. Then, we realized that the door had been open all along, and the rest of the passengers were all waiting in there in cool air-conditioned comfort. Damn!
We got to Bangkok Airport, and we tried to get rid of our stuff so that maybe we could do something out and about without huge bags to carry around.
Unfortunately, we couldn't, so we were stuck with our bags, and it sucked. We walked up to the food court, and heard someone calling Jessie's name!
It was Vanessa and Carole-Anne from the UNESCO camp, waiting for their return flight to Korea. We sat with them for a while, and chatted about our vacations, as they were just coming back Singapore and Thailand. We had a merry little chat.
Then Jessie and I began finishing up some postcards. We were working away, and I realized I was one stamp short, so I went down to pick one up from the post office. I got there, and FREAKED, because the line to check in was miles long. Also, at the post office, there was a guy with a bag of about 60 small packages, each of which had to be individually weighed and stamped. After some snooping, I determined that he had decided to send everyone he knew in the world a (wait for it) belt. That's right, a belt. wow.
I got the stamp, and went back upstairs. On the way, I passed a currency exchange counter, so I figured that I had might as well convert my baht to won while I was there (it seems tedious, but it'll be significant later). When I got back to our seats, Jessie was gone! All our stuff was gone! Luckily, a note that Jessie had left for me had been left there long enough for me to find it, and I caught up to her (and all our bags, which she had somehow managed to carry) at the bathroom.
Anyways, we finished our postcards quickly, and went to get in line. I thought we were doing alright for time, but I did not realize how long we had spent just waiting around and writing post cards. We only had about an hour and twenty minutes until our flight! With a huge line head of us!We ran down and got in the line. Well, it was not much of a line. There were the few honest folks who attempted to make a line, and then the others who just walked by and around, wherever there was room, to bud in front. After about five minutes of watching people jump in front of us and felling as though we were being pushed backwards, we joined the jumpsters and filed by the "line".
From where we budded, it was almost a line, so we felt a little more confident. Then, after a while, we noticed that almost every line was moving except ours! We only had forty minutes left!
It turns out that our flight had been double booked for many seats, so they were having to deal with that. How they did, I have no idea, but luckily, after a few phonecalls by the person we were dealing with, we were waved on. Right about then, we noticed that our flight had been delayed by about 25 minutes. We started towards the gate, only to encounter a booth where we had to pay a 500 baht "Passenger Service Fee". Jessie had no baht, and I had just converted mine, and they refused to let me pay in won. So, I had to go back to the currency counter and exchange money back! What a hassle!
We got past the booth, and encountered more lines! These ones were pretty long, and showed similar signs of complete non-movement. Even with the delay, we were cutting things really close. To make matters worse, we were in front of a huge biker guy who had not seen a bar of soap in a couple of days. Luckily, the line was the only place where we had to be beside him for a long period of time. I'd hate to have had to sit beside him all the way to Seoul. But at least I would not have had to be worried or self-conscious of my own smell... oh well. We finally got out, and ran to our gate, where we encountered yet another line, that was not moving. We were the last two people let in the doors (because there was no room left in the waiting area), but when our line ceased to move (people piled in, formed a second line that merged ahead of us), the people who had been behind us were through the x-ray scanner before we were even half-way. ARGH!
When we got to the counter, we had to turn in our passports and other info to the ladies there, who took notes on it, as we tapped our toes and freaked out. But we had made it by then, there's no way we would have been allowed to miss the plane for that reason.

From then on, everything was good, until we got woken up at 4/6 am for disgusting fish breakfast. Just let me sleep! Gah!

It was funny, as Jessie has been saying through our whole trip, that whereas most Canadians visit Thailand for a foreign experience, it was a little taste of the west for us. Korea is so cut-off compared to Thailand, which is just crawling with tourists. Everyone there knows enough english that I did not say a single word of Thai during our entire trip, except for "Chang" when we sang the elephant song.
There was this angry hippy on our first night in Ao Nang who went on this loud and really offensive rant about how when he started coming to Krabi and Ao Nang, things had been so different, the locals would take him into their house, and it was not a resort town. He said he knew the dream was over the day he saw his first baby stroller. Of course, he gestured to one nearby as he said this, and since I heard him (and I don't hear a lot), I imagine that most of the restaurant would have heard him basically telling them that he was unwelcome in "his" tropical paradise.
But, the bottom line is, there are still a lot of non-touristed areas, where he could just as easily pitch his tent and not have to deal with "us". At first, I was a little put off by the fact that there were more tourists than Thais, which was a little weird. But after we realized that soon we would be returning to nothing but Korean food, Korean culture and Korean friends, it was time to embrace the west! We ate a lot of Italian, and we enjoyed the fact that we did not have to strain and struggle the most basic ideas.

Well, we finally got home, unpacked, I made some penne and tomato sauce, and then I washed my laundry, and stained all my clothes when my new pants ran.

And, I have one more day off, I just found out. I called MinAhn, and he said "You must be tired, so you should stay home and rest. No debate, no "Are you tired?" Just, stay home, baby.

All right.