Saturday, November 17, 2007
Saturday, 11.3: Bangkok to DC
After only a few hours of sleep, Bri’s phone rang at 3:30 in the morning—it was my dad, our pre-arranged wake-up call. We tried to be quiet while getting ready so we wouldn’t disturb the people who were sleeping in the bunk beds outside our room (and had nothing but a semi-opaque curtain separating them from our middle-of-the-night exodus). The taxi arrived right on time, and the ride to the airport was unsurprisingly traffic-less. Once we’d checked in, we decided to make a stop at Starbucks to bookend the trip with frappuccinos before heading to our gate.
Somehow, we ended up sitting in different rows on the flight to Tokyo—Bri sat next to a gay couple from Chiang Mai in the back of the plane, while I was toward the middle in what turned out to be a free upgrade to Economy Plus. (I didn’t realize it until Bri greeted me in Tokyo with a slightly bitter, “How was Economy Plus?”) All I knew was, I could recline as much as I wanted since the only thing behind me was the emergency exit, and I could stretch out considerably since there was no one in the seat next to me. Needless to say, I slept for most of the flight.
Once in Tokyo, we again killed time during our layover by eating sushi. The flight back to Dulles was fairly uneventful—we both watched Sicko, and I also watched parts of Ocean’s Thirteen and No Reservations, but neither of them could hold my interest under the fog of jet lag. Back in Washington, it took us a couple of hours to get through customs, get our bags, and make it back to my apartment via the bus and Metro. Once there, we ordered pizza and settled in to watch our favorite traveling companion in Crossroads, but our jet lag overpowered even our love for Brit, so we called it a night around 7 p.m.
And several hours later, in the middle of a deep sleep, I managed to stretch funny and pull a muscle in my neck, making it impossible for me to turn my head even an inch without inflicting serious pain. I got up to put some ice on it, hoping the injury would resolve itself during the night, but once morning rolled around, it was still pretty painful. Since I was due to take Bri back to the airport in a matter of hours, I had no choice but to get her to drive me to the emergency room, where they gave me a shot to ease the pain, along with a prescription for muscle relaxers (which will no doubt come in handy the next time I inevitably do this). I mention this incident only because: a) When the emergency-room paperwork asked if I had been to Asia in the last 30 days, I could actually answer yes, and b) The fact that I survived a trip to Thailand, where I could have caught any number of debilitating and life-threatening diseases, without more than a scrape on the knee, yet managed to sustain an emergency-room-visit-necessitating injury the moment I got home, is just too ironic not to mention. Also: Where are those cheap Thai massages when I really need them? I think I might have to go back.
After only a few hours of sleep, Bri’s phone rang at 3:30 in the morning—it was my dad, our pre-arranged wake-up call. We tried to be quiet while getting ready so we wouldn’t disturb the people who were sleeping in the bunk beds outside our room (and had nothing but a semi-opaque curtain separating them from our middle-of-the-night exodus). The taxi arrived right on time, and the ride to the airport was unsurprisingly traffic-less. Once we’d checked in, we decided to make a stop at Starbucks to bookend the trip with frappuccinos before heading to our gate.
Somehow, we ended up sitting in different rows on the flight to Tokyo—Bri sat next to a gay couple from Chiang Mai in the back of the plane, while I was toward the middle in what turned out to be a free upgrade to Economy Plus. (I didn’t realize it until Bri greeted me in Tokyo with a slightly bitter, “How was Economy Plus?”) All I knew was, I could recline as much as I wanted since the only thing behind me was the emergency exit, and I could stretch out considerably since there was no one in the seat next to me. Needless to say, I slept for most of the flight.
Once in Tokyo, we again killed time during our layover by eating sushi. The flight back to Dulles was fairly uneventful—we both watched Sicko, and I also watched parts of Ocean’s Thirteen and No Reservations, but neither of them could hold my interest under the fog of jet lag. Back in Washington, it took us a couple of hours to get through customs, get our bags, and make it back to my apartment via the bus and Metro. Once there, we ordered pizza and settled in to watch our favorite traveling companion in Crossroads, but our jet lag overpowered even our love for Brit, so we called it a night around 7 p.m.
And several hours later, in the middle of a deep sleep, I managed to stretch funny and pull a muscle in my neck, making it impossible for me to turn my head even an inch without inflicting serious pain. I got up to put some ice on it, hoping the injury would resolve itself during the night, but once morning rolled around, it was still pretty painful. Since I was due to take Bri back to the airport in a matter of hours, I had no choice but to get her to drive me to the emergency room, where they gave me a shot to ease the pain, along with a prescription for muscle relaxers (which will no doubt come in handy the next time I inevitably do this). I mention this incident only because: a) When the emergency-room paperwork asked if I had been to Asia in the last 30 days, I could actually answer yes, and b) The fact that I survived a trip to Thailand, where I could have caught any number of debilitating and life-threatening diseases, without more than a scrape on the knee, yet managed to sustain an emergency-room-visit-necessitating injury the moment I got home, is just too ironic not to mention. Also: Where are those cheap Thai massages when I really need them? I think I might have to go back.
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