Rancho Mirage, California
Friday, July 29, 2005
Wow. I am home. Well, at my mom's house in California... not sure where home is right at this moment. Beth and I got into LA at 11 am yesterday morning after about 31 hours of airplanes and airports... ick. We caught the free bus to the airport from Comfort suites in
Bangkok, checked our backpacks (and my precious and almost ill-fated tube for my painting), and enjoyed some time without those enormous hunchback inducing bags. Beth was fully decked out crunchy Khaosan style... the flop over pants (I lovingly refer to them as her poopy pants because, well, it always looks like she's got a dirty diaper because of the droop), the ethnic halter top, the stanky sneakers (oh-so-stanky), the hair bandana, the big floopy curls ( i know floopy isnt a word, but it seems appropriate), and of course the enormous cotton sack. It was wonderful. I, being slightly less exciting, or less prone to change my style, or just generally anti-the crunchy sage monkey look due to sensory overload in
Taos, take your pick... just wore my reserve zip lock packet of real clothes... jeans, hoodie, flip flops ( I did go for the head turban though... but mostly because my hair was psycho curly, and I am always cold). It was SUPER weird to be in real clothes... Beth and I lived in athletic shorts and racer back tank tops for 6 weeks... stinky too. The flight to Tokyo was about 7 hours, the food was terrible (what a surprise, we were back on American airlines), grey eggs, covered in what could only be described as an alfredo sauce... ICKY! Regardless... there was lots of reading, and some terrible movie, and a 3 hour layover, and then the 12 hour flight to LA, watched about 3 movies, slept, ate (or didn't) eat more terrible food. Made lots of fun of Beth for how bad her shoes stunk... its all love though :) Picked up our bags at LAX, went through passport check and customs
(where I was accosted by some bastard customs agent...
Where have you been? Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China
How long were you in Vietnam and Thailand combined? uh... about 3 weeks.
What is your profession? I just graduated university, so either a student or unemployed...
Well, then how did you afford this trip? My mom bought me a plane ticket as a graduation present.
WEEELLL.... isn't that nice for you!
What is this guys problem. wow. Then rechecking bags, biding each other adieu (soooo sad!!!), and off to my plane to Palm Springs (only a 45 minute flight). Beth unfortunately had A LOT more traveling to do to get to West Palm Beach, Florida. Landed in Palm Springs, met mom, grabbed a pastrami sandwich.. and FREE water WITH ICE!!! And I've been just generally chillin', doing laundry, helping mom with the house, eating lots of red meat, and GASP veggies, and loving the free water supply, and ice, and picked up her new car (Piiiiimp!), and running around doing errands etc...
its off to
Taos with mom in a couple of days to do some mandatory daughterly manual labor (cleaning out the storage lockers, dealing with the Z, etc..), and hopefully catching up with a few of the peeps. Hope the travel-blogs were fun for everyone. Ill send one last one soon when I upload all the photos.
