losing a friend

the hotel arranged my transport to bangkok. they said 10 hours by bus. i needed to buy 3 tickets to take the bike with me. they discovered this by calling the bus company and specifically asking them.

next morning i was taken by tuk-tuk to the bus pick up location. the bus arrived and was already full of folks, then they loaded the other 12 people waiting with me along with their bags. clearly, me and the machine weren`t about to fit.

i hung back and waited for some sort of problem solver to show up. he said he`d find a pickup truck to take me to the border. tuk-tuked to another spot, where a cab showed up. there were 3 peeps in the back seat already. there was no way of fitting the machine in the trunk of the camry, so i put it up for sale. the problem solver gave me $30 for it. i let loose a quick tear and climbed in to the ride.

at the border, some dude put a sticker on my shirt, walked me to immigration, and said there would be someone waiting for me on the other side. either they weren`t there or we just never found each other. i waited around sweating for a couple hours, then booked another cab for bangkok. i stayed with dave and krista.

the next morning i got to the airport at 4:30 to see three days worth of passengers trying to get on my plane. apparently the fedex crash at narita had held things up. i didn`t get on that one, and was instead rerouted through hong kong. made it to tokyo at 8:30 pm, too late for the bullet train. i stayed with makiko (anne`s old conversation partner) and her boyfriend.

thursday morning makiko took me to tokyo station and got me on the shinkansen. super fast! arrived at shin kobe about 3 hours later.