Good things come to those who wait...

Flying via Buddy Pass can be a challenge, but man do I LOVE being upgraded. =)

So at first I had to scrap my Sunday flight plans because all the flights filled up, and then I spent 8 hours at Hartsfield on Monday trying to no avail to get on one of four flights to LA or Tokyo... Thus when I woke up on Tuesday, I was determined to do whatever possible to get my ass to Asia... As it turned out, that involved flying from Atlanta to Milwaukee, Milwaukee to Minneapolis, and then 3 terse hours waiting in Minneapolis to see if I would make it on the flight to Tokyo... and not only did I make it, but I got upgraded to first class... Boo yah!

2 meals, 3 movies and 11 hours later we touched down in Narita where I spent my first 15 minutes ever in Asia before taking off for Bangkok (also first class by the way). ;) And though I spent no more time than that in Tokyo, I learned two interesting things about Japan.

1) They drive on the left side of the road (which surprised me, but I've since learned that the Thai drive on the left too... and I had always thought it was the U.K. that was idiosyncratic in this department)... Guess not.

2) Despite my conception of Japan as an island of overcrowded mega-cities, the countryside is as lush green, and cut up into patchwork farms as anything you'd see on the East Coast of the U.S.

Since then I've landed in Bangkok and found a decent hotel room in the city for 600 Thai Baht (approximately $20). Its now 2AM and I just finished an hour long walk through the Sukhumvit part of the city, which is vibrant, even at this hour, with shoppers, vendors, tourists, partiers (and yes, prostitutes)... I've already been approached by at least a dozen women, girls that look like boys and boys that are definitely boys, but thankfully a curt shake of the head is all it takes to walk on by unharassed.

Now I think I'll head on back to the hotel, since I'm meeting Danny Yunes at the airport tomorrow morning to catch our flight down to Koh Samui (an island in southern Thailand) for 4 days in paradise. =)

Lakon! (Thai for Goodbye), ;)
-Tom

P.S. A HUGE shoutout to my boy Dan for the gift of a Buddy Pass and for helping me navigate a myriad of flights to make sure I got to Thailand on time... And also, a big shoutout to Delta, which somehow managed to get my luggage on the same flight as me from Tokyo to Bangkok, despite the fact that I was coming from Minneapolis and my luggage was coming from LA!... once again I love the friendly skies! ;)