Going Home

March 27 - April 1

We are ready to go home - physically and emotionally ready. These last two weeks of relative idleness have left us feeling directionless.  Home is a new direction.  We have a long route - Phuket to Bangkok, 6 hour layover in Bangkok, Bangkok to Seoul (5 hour flight), 9 hour layover in Seoul, 11 hour flight to San Francisco, three night stay in San Francisco, 4 hour flight to O'Hare, and 5 hour drive home. We have an 11 hour time difference, Bangkok to Chicago, and we cross the international date line in the middle of the Pacific.  As we predict, jet lag ends up doing a job on us.

The 9 hour layover in Seoul goes much better than we expected due to the extraordinary features of the sparkling Seoul airport.  The have lounge chairs for sleeping, free showers, cultural exhibits, and free tours of Seoul.  We'd planned to take one of the city tours, but neither of us slept well on the flight, so instead we nap at the airport, take showers and browse around.  The airport shops are all high end designer names, so we don't spend much time shopping.  There's a Starbucks here, but they don't have decaf!  I decide I need an apple, and despite much searching there are no apples at the airport.  Other than apples and decaf, however, this airport offers a lot.

We don't sleep much on the flight to San Francisco either, so we are pretty much brain dead and don't see anything except our hotel room in San Francisco.  Adam is off in Argentina, so we don't see him.  We do, however, connect with Sandy and Dick from Sonoma, who we met on our Laos tour.  They are in the city so we get together to swap more travel tales at the Ferry Building (an apt setting).

At O'Hare, we've arranged to Terry McCann's limo service to drive us to Janesville, but the silly goose refuses payment.  We have a pleasant dinner at the Leach home with the Leaches and McCann's, and spend the night. By noon we are home, where Tom has already turned on the heat and hot water, so it's a painless arrival.  It's April first, and Wisconsin fools us by snowing that night and the next day.

So, would we do it again?  You bet, we are already thinking we'll spend most of next winter in South America.

Lessons learned:
1) Don't take such a long tour.  Forty days was a lot, and sometimes we felt like we just wanted to relax in one place.  Many people we met on the Intrepid tour of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand didn't link the segments together like we did.  Instead, they booked individual segments and allowed themselves some free time in between.

2) An overall travel agent is a good idea, based on people we talked to.  Agents are problem solvers.  For example, one couple found that a foreign flight had been cancelled.  They didn't have an effective web connection to rebook, but they had their agent's phone number, and that was all they needed.

3) Guides are well worth the expense.  We had wonderful guides.  In addition to showing us the sights and explaining it all, it was great to have someone who could answer all our questions. We especially appreciated their openness in responding to our curiosity about Buddhism.

4) Buddhism is what you make it.