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Somewhere Beyond the Sea: My Fails in Thailand

This post could really get out of hand. I am also going to be careful because some of my stories involve other people who haven't chosen to broadcast their fails to the world, so for the most part I'll be focusing on my part in these exciting adventures in failure. However, my mother-in-law has agreed to let me share part of her story too in the second section.

Let's see, where to start. Well, rather than go in chronological order, let's group by theme.

1. Pregnancy (Feel free to skip if this doesn't interest you.)

I have largely avoided morning sickness during this pregnancy, thank God. But of course, the morning of our early flight out of Greenville, I managed to have my first bout. So I got on our flight feeling awful and having eaten a couple of bites of a scone. We got to Chicago where I proceeded to be sick but did manage to eat part of a burger. That layover was 8 hours. Bleh. Then we got on the plan from Chicago to Tokyo for a fun 11 hour flight by ANA. ANA is a great airline, but they serve Japanese food for their meals. That's normally not a problem, but I could NOT handle the smell. So, I spent a good bit of time on that flight in the bathroom and not eating. The poor man beside me kept having to let me get up. Sorry, nice man. We spent a night and half a day in Tokyo and then flew another 8 hours to Bangkok, during which I had a similar flying experience.

We arrived in Thailand. That's when things got fun.

We arrived very late and slept well. Got up early the next day for a day of getting things done and sightseeing with Jeremy's cousin. Let's just suffice to say that I walked myself exhausted that day and really overdid it after such an eventful few days flying. And I paid for it.

*possible pregnancy trigger* That second night, I started bleeding heavily. I was 12 weeks pregnant. And I cried because I feared the worst and blamed myself. Jeremy and I did some research, I called my doctor here but didn't hear back, and we got the information for the local hospital in case I needed to go. But what we found was that it would be highly unlikely for me to be able to do anything to have caused the worst to happen, and that if it had happened, there wasn't much I could do about it there. And I could have gone to the local hospital, but I never did cramp or have pain. A lot of moms online had posted that they had similar experiences but nothing bad ever came of it, and though I'm not saying I made a decision based on internet posts, I did calm down and realized that all was probably ok. So I took it easy for a couple of days and things improved. (They improved, but it all continued and is still continuing. I have since been to the doctor who confirmed everything is ok, even though it was scary and concerning. They said sometimes these things happen. *shrug)

I also had a horrible time with the smells. Most people know that when you're pregnant you smell everything much more than normal. The market, the seafood, even the trash... every smell hit me really hard.

I also couldn't eat much. BUT IT'S THAI FOOD! I know. I ate all I could. The things I loved eating were red curry and rice, sweet rice and custard, beef jerky, and all the satay and cucumber salad I could find. I also got quite a few slushies at nearby 7-Elevens and Dairy Queen (about half a mile from their house.) I could not eat noodle dishes or broths. I have no idea why.

The only other pregnancy thing of note is that, from not eating and from all the walking, I lost over 10 pounds on the trip. The doctor was ok with it given the circumstances. I'm ok with it because 10 pounds, yes! And baby is ok.

Oh, and the flights back mirrored the flights in. Laura's in the bathroom... again... Yeah, awesome. And I caught a cold.

2. Travel and Luggage

 My mother-in-law came on this trip. She is from Thailand and was excited to visit for the first time since she left as a child. This proved to be harder than expected. First, she had passport issues that didn't get resolved until the week she was leaving. Then, when she got to the airport to check in, the name used on her ticket (ordered by a third party), her nickname, didn't match her full name on her passport, so the airline wouldn't let her go. At that point, we were all really worried she wouldn't even make it to Thailand. Luckily, she was able to get the error fixed and fly out a day later. We went to meet her at the Bangkok airport and the first thing we realized was that she had no luggage. Um...

Turns out that her luggage never made it out of Los Angeles on her connecting flight. The airline said they could have it by X day and then Y day and then, well, you get the picture. Her luggage didn't arrive until we'd already been to Chiang Mai, so in the interim she picked up some clothes at a nearby store.

She wasn't the only one with luggage woes. When we packed our bag for Chiang Mai, my stack of clothes got left out of the suitcase, so I had no clothes for the 3 days we were there. Well, I borrowed some and bought some pants and a shirt at the market, but yeah. No clothes.

3. Miscellaneous
a) The hotel room's shower head in Chiang Mai sprayed water all over the bathroom because it was put on at an awkward angle.
b) I got a cold sore.
c) I left my very expensive headphones on the plane to Tokyo.
d) I had horrible hair for about 3 days until I found some mousse at a supermarket.
e) I worried everyone because I couldn't eat much.
f) I had to push a lot of buttons on the Tokyo toilets before I found the one that flushed. You can play music on those toilets. 0_o

You might be thinking this all sounds very negative. Well, I remind you: you are reading a blog about failures. I had a wonderful time on the trip, and the positive outweighs the negative by so much! But I wanted to share some of these things because, while maybe they're not funny per se in retrospect, they're still part of the trip and made for a really interesting time!

Ok, ok here are a few successes:
1. Their dog and I bonded during the trip
2. I didn't "get sick" at all during the actual stay there
3. I found a beautiful jade necklace that I got as my main souviner
4. In one of the open truck thingies you could ride in -- they had covered seats in the back...maybe enough room for 8-10 -- the art they chose for the inside roof of the cover was American winter scenes. One picture was of the lighthouse in Maine we visited several years ago! So weird to see that in a truck in Thailand but hilarious and I count it as a "win"!

A couple of pics (you've most likely seen them on Facebook already):








Comments

  1. This is my 3rd attempt to post a comment!

    As I was saying...EH...things happen and will continue to happen but life goes on.
    I was glad I was able to be there for my mother. I was blessed to share the experience with my oldest son and my favorite beautiful daughter in law. It was fun!

    ReplyDelete

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