Travel/Arrival

As you can imagine the travel was pretty sucky. I was sick as a dog and I was en route for over 24 hours. It was awful. It was better though, because on my flight from Chicago to Tokyo there were only two of us in a three across and on my final flight it was just me in a three across. I was so sick that I couldn’t eat anything on the plane…and I still haven’t eaten anything. So basically I’ve been fasting since dinner at Sylvia’s on the 16^th minus a popsicle, half a yogurt, a few bites of lime jello, water and two potato chips. I'm dying.

So that’s all I'm going to say about the travel for now…there may be more stories later. But let’s talk about my arrival. All went well when I got off the plane. I was surprised to find my luggage. The way the trip had been going so far I assumed it would be lost. When I got exited the baggage claim area I had no idea where to go to meet Cartoon and Mr. Kai (the man taking me to the hostel.) I wandered for about twenty minutes until I saw Cartoon sprinting towards me, teary eyed. I dropped my stuff and began crying as well out of joy and relief to see her. She gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and her mom gave me a bag and her mom’s “friend” gave me a box of chocolates. Then she introduced me to Mr. Kai whom she had sought out and found for me. She’s such a good sister. Then we left the airport. She said to call her as soon as I got the my new home and that she would see me on Wednesday.

So on my way to the hostel I was freaking out, partly because I was excited to finally be here but I was really scared too. It was an hour drive. I tried to talk to Mr. Kai but his English isn’t very good so it was hard. Everything was gorgeous and exotic…that is, until we go to Ayutthaya. It was like a very poor city, I would even say it’s like what we call inner city. There were markets set up along the road and a lot of the buildings were in poor condition. It got even worse when we got to “old Ayutthaya” where I would be staying. There were lots of people on motor bikes and I saw a couple of pickup trucks with probably ten young children in the back…and this was 1 a.m. It was basically the ghetto.

Then Mr. Kai pulled down this little side street and up to this gated building. He gave me his phone to call Cartoon and then went to the gate and shook/rattled it until a sleepy-eyed man came and undid the padlock. There were stray dogs and cats all up and down the dirt road. It was rather creepy. Then he walked me inside the gate and around the back of the building. There was a stone wall with little pieces of glass along the top of it. He unlocked a room and gave me the key. I stepped inside a tiny room smaller than my freshman dorm. I had two roommates but of course they were asleep. I had the top bunk so I basically dropped my things on the floor and climbed up...onto stone hahaa. The bed is hard as a rock but it worked just fine. I was finally able to stretch out. I fell asleep quickly but was awakened by the sounds of stray dogs trying to kill each other or the stray cat with a nub tail.