Welcome Home

It's hard to prepare yourself for what 50 hours of travel will feel like. It shouldn't be that exhausting because really, aren't you just sitting on your butt for 80 percent of the time? But with each move to a new bus, train, tram, taxi or plane, it's as if exponential amounts of energy are sapped. I'm not going to lie to you. When I reached Seattle and the Customs Agent stamped my passport and said "welcome home," I started to cry a little. They were the best two words I heard in days. I think I scared him a bit because I'm pretty sure he tried to grab my passport to cross out the admittance stamp for the crazy lady.

Thailand was fabulous and I wouldn't trade the experience and the time with family for the world, but it is exhausting to travel to the other side of the world and back. Add in a little incident after a 10 hour bus ride into Bangkok, and it's just that much more exhausting.


I placed everything I owned of value into a backpack so that I could keep it all with me...camera lenses, camera, cell phone, video, jewelry, purchases, etc. When that backpack didn't fit in the bus overhead, I was forced to stow beneath the bus with my luggage. A simple black backpack can easily confused with other black backpacks. At the final stop, my backpack was gone, but another black backpack remained--full of laundry. I admit, I'm a sucker for laundry, but I'd rather have the video of my family in Thailand, and sitting in a police station hours before your flight is not the ideal way to leave a country. 40 hours of travel home allows you spend a lot of time thinking...

Thailand was amazing and the people were incredible. There are no words to explain what it's like to hear family stories and see where generations of your family lived their everyday lives. And Thailand was also incredibly humbling. Bangkok could be any town in the US, but go outside and you are presented with a country in which many homes are built with whatever materials can be easily found and very often do not have walls, mothers travel with their infants and toddlers all on one scooter, and toilets are often ceramic bowls in the ground. And with all this, they are happy. There is not the focus on the newest technology or owning in excess of what you use. Life is not all about careers and getting ahead and growing your portfolio. It's about happiness and enjoying your days. While I would find it difficult to live that minimally and be 100% okay with it, it does get a girl thinking about the excesses in her life. How is it that I even had one backpack with contents valued at over the annual income of many Thai families?

Someone asked if I'd ever go back and the answer was absolutely. Allowing the loss of "stuff" to dictate how or if I traveled meant I would lose more than the contents of my backpack. I was absolutely heartbroken on losing the irreplaceable items, but in the end I had a peace knowing that it was just indeed "stuff." And the positive side of the backpack experience was insight into family bonds and Thai generosity. My aunt sent a friend to the bus station to pick me up and get me to the airport. While I kept saying it wasn't necessary, I was so very glad in light of the backpack incident. This woman took an entire evening of her time to travel across Bangkok to meet a stranger, spent time as her interpreter, took her to the police station, insisted on paying all cabs and tuk tuks and drove her to the airport in the end. When my baseball cap flew off on an especially exciting tuk tuk ride, I shrugged at her thinking it was pretty appropriate in light of everything else that had happened. She came down from her condo later with her own baseball cap that she gifted me with--it's now my favorite hat. My mom has called me numerous times about family in Bangkok and up north spending time at the bus stations trying to track down the owner of the other backpack and I told her to let them know they seriously didn't need to go through so much trouble. And yet they persisted because they were upset for me. That family effort and concern makes me want to travel back to see them right now--even with a potential 50 hours of travel. My mom called me a bit ago to say they'd found the owner and my uncle had my backpack. All that effort for me, makes me cry a little now.

So 50 hours after it all began I arrived home, and just in time. Just twelve hours after I arrived, DIA begain grounding flights due to another Denver spring storm, and it's been snowing ever since. Perfect if you are snowed in at home with a batch of cinnamon rolls rising on the counter. I do however feel for those affected by this storm who are traveling, tired and just want to get home.