BACK HOME

I arrived back in Albuquerque late last night, having endured five flights (six stops) in 30 hours — all of it January 11th because of the International Date Line.  I left Bangkok at 8:45 in the morning local time (30 minutes late) on Royal Thai Airways, changed to Air Canada in Tokyo, went through U.S. Customs at Vancouver before changing to a Jazz flight to Portland, was switched from America West to Southwest Airlines in the Rose City which took me to Albuquerque via Reno and a plane-change in Las Vegas, stepping off the last plane at 11:45p.m. Albuquerque time.  I'm pooped!

I did begin to write an update of my last two or three days while at the Bangkok airport and had planned to write more during the layovers in Tokyo and Vancouver (3 and 4 hours, respectively), but I ran into one of the guys I'd met back in Vancouver on the way out.  By amazing coincidence, he had the exact same flights I did all the way to Oregon so we spent the downtime in the airports recounting our adventures of the last few weeks to each other (he spent much of his time in Cambodia and only a week or so in Bangkok and Kanchanaburi).

I'm still sorting through all of my laundry and unpacking my souvenirs, etc.  I had planned to begin uploading my photos last night but that was delayed by a major failure of my hard drive.  I lost all of my data (including photos from previous trips, 100 gigibytes or so of downloaded music, and — worse of all — my financial records in my Money program so it will be difficult to figure out my total finances for last year now, not to mention I no longer have any of my website bookmarks so I have A LOT of work ahead of me!)...

I think tomorrow I'll work on a proper update to the blog — the last several days of the trip were the most activity-filled of the entire vacation and I would like to get the details written before the memories fade.  Then I will begin working with the photos; I'll need to transfer them from the CD's I had burned while on the road (12 total) and then rename the photos by date and time (I remembered to set the clock on the camera to local time) before I upload them.  This all, of course, is in addition to re-entering info into Money, restoring bookmarks by memory, plus going to the post office and the grocery store (the only thing edible in my house right now is a box of Wheat Thins and a couple of boxes of "instant" Thai noodles).  Oh, yes.  I'll also begin transferring the five-and-half hours of video I shot to DVD — a full backup first for me and then various edited versions for friends and relatives.  And, most importantly, give Tim a call in Phuket to let her know I made it back safely...