Travel day: Seattle to Seoul to Bangkok to Phuket aka The Marathon

Turns out, jet-lag is a real thing. I was unaware of this fact before the Thailand trip. But apparently taking three flights across ten time zones will, in fact, make you feel like shit.

The flights themselves were reasonable; even the eleven hour one from Seattle to Seoul, South Korea. Asian flight attendants are totally adorable in their matching suits and little hats. We got free slippers and TV with all sorts of movies and music to listen to (are I not easy to please?). I amused myself with watching movies I would normally avoid. The Hunger Games was first up. There was a lot of lead up to the games with no action! And while the whole thing was very emotionally charged it failed to impress me in the end.  Then it was What to Expect When Expecting, which was Love Actually but with pregnant people. Grease was just super annoying; the only worthwhile song was Grease Lightning. After those four I may have watched a few gems that I’ve seen before. I.e. Marvel movies.

There was plane food to avoid. Three meals of it! Monica chowed down like it was the last meal she would ever get. When I asked what the rush was she said, “If I eat fast I won’t taste the mystery meat.” Back in May, when we bought the plane tickets, I requested the vegan option so I could avoid leaving mystery meat on my plate, which I’d feel bad about wasting. Unfortunately this means that I didn’t get the delicious blueberry cheesecake for dessert. But Monica, angel that she is, let me have half of hers.

The flights may have been long, but the layovers felt a lot longer. Looking back, sitting in the Bangkok airport was a low point of the trip. Not the lowest point, but a close second or third maybe. It was heavily air conditioned and we packed pretty light; in terms of amount and type of clothing. And we were exhausted. So for 8 hours Monica and I sat, exhausted, cold and hungry in BKK. Not fun.

Arrival in Phuket was anti-climactic. I imagined Manda standing at the arrivals gate with her parents, eagerly awaiting the announcement of the 7:20 flight from Bangkok. But it was not to be, they were nowhere to be seen. Turns out they didn’t plan out enough time to getting to the airport in traffic. Surprise! Honestly I wasn’t actualy surprised, but Monica was a bit doubtful that they remembered us at all.

They did arrive, of course. Admittedly I was so jetlagged that there was no crazy, happy, joyful hugfest with Manda. There was hugging (of all Hackings) and some crying on Manda’s part, but at this point I was somewhat zombie like. Inside though, below all the layers of exhaustion, I was more excited than a child on Christmas.

In a departure from the normal Hacking protocol, the Hacking’s had rented a little four door sedan for our time in Phuket. We wouldn’t have all fit on the scooter anyways (normal mode of transport). And the sights of Phuket Island would have been very expensive to see from cab. So we departed from Phuket airport, squished into the back seat of a silver Mazda on to the first official day of Thailand adventure.