I took a bus from Tak to Chiang Mai on Wednesday.  The people in the Tak bus station were rude again.  I’m glad this will be my last Tak bus station experience.  While sitting at the bus station, I could see the news on tv.  There was coverage of the Loi Krathong cleanup.  I’m not sure where the cleanup was happening, but it was heavy equipment pulling buckets and buckets of krathongs out of the water and putting them in trash trucks.  Even though the materials are all biodegradable, they aren’t going to degrade for a long time and they are still a massive amount of trash in the water.

I got to Chiang Mai and checked into my hotel then went to By Hand Pizza for my last dinner in Thailand.  I had friends that were in Chiang Mai for the festival and they suggested meeting for the parade.  Chiang Mai canceled the festival, but it sure didn’t look like it.  There were a ton of people lining the road.  I found a place near one of the floats and texted my friends where I was.  Then the parade started and I discovered I was standing next to a float that wasn’t moving and the parade was happening on the other side of the float.  All I could see was the tops of white glittery floats.  All the floats were ornate white glittery things with the picture of the King on them.  I couldn’t see anything that was happening in between the floats, but I’ll guess it was people dressed all in black.  I looked around me and it was 90% tourists, not many Thais at all.  This didn’t surprise me, but it just felt wrong.  They played the King’s song and no one seemed to notice – how would they – they were all tourists like me.  I started crying.  This isn’t a Thai festival.  It’s a tourist show.  This isn’t how I want to spend my last night in Thailand.  I couldn’t find my friends and standing in a crowd of people crying and watching a parade I can’t see makes no sense.  So, I left to get a massage.  I found my friends later.  We wandered for a while and then went to a roof top bar.  It was a fun bar, but hot and smoky.  I didn’t stay long because of the smoke.

Thursday morning, I went and got a healthy breakfast with fresh squeezed juice and a bowl full of healthy granola fruit and other superfood stuff.  I tried to find a hotel in Indonesia.  The lady at the dive shop had said I shouldn’t book ahead, I could just do it when I got there and it would be cheaper.  But that makes me uncomfortable so I thought I would at least look at the options.  I wrote down the names of the places I liked.

In the afternoon, I went to the airport.  Now I’m traveling with two suitcases.  I know I will have to pay extra for the extra suitcase and I’m not looking forward to dragging two through airports, but I don’t see much way around it.  It cost me $175 for the extra suitcase.  Oh my god I feel violated.  It was very confusing that I had to go through the international terminal for a domestic flight to Bangkok.  I’m still at the check in desk when my flight should be boarding.  The lady said I had plenty of time.  I go through immigration and get to the gate and no one is there and there is nothing written on the gate sign.  There are a bunch of other confused people on the same flights so I figure I’m in the right place and somehow it will work out.  Thailand magic, it does.  The flight was delayed so I wasn’t late to the gate.  They put stickers on our shirts, put us on a shuttle bus and shuttled us to the domestic flight.  Now, I will have less than an hour to make my connection in Bangkok with only a sticker on my shirt to claim I’ve already been through immigration.  This would never work in America.  I get off the plane and there is a lady holding a sign with the same logo as my sticker.  The sign also has two flights written on it with the gate number.  One is mine to Jakarta.  The sticker gets me easily into the international terminal and I’m at my gate 5 minutes before it boards.  Thailand magic.

I remember 10 plus years ago I was sitting in an airport in Taiwan waiting for my connecting flight to somewhere.  I had a 6 hour layover and couldn’t leave the airport because I didn’t have a visa.  I watched movies and listened to all the flight announcements.  I distinctly remembering that I heard flights to Jakarta being announced often.  I remember thinking that Jakarta seemed like such a worldly and exotic place, like people more well-traveled than me would go there.  It felt like, you haven’t really travelled until you’ve been to Jakarta.  I knew nothing about Jakarta.  I still know very little about Jakarta.  But, I’m going there and even though I will never leave the airport, I feel much more worldly now.

I watched a movie and two Discovery shows on the plane.  The Discovery shows were great.  Both were about subjects I am naturally interested in and I felt like they were reminders to me of what I need to be doing.  One was called “Predict My Future”.  It was about an on-going study called the Dunedin Study.  They have followed a group of 1,000 people since childhood and kept extensive medical, psychological and sociological records on them over the years.  The study group is in their 40s now.  A lot of what they discussed is how our childhood shaped our adulthood.  It didn’t go into the spiritual side of things, but I bet there is data on that as well.  They barely scratched the surface on the amount of data collected, research done and learning gained from this study.  As I watch it, all I can think of is ATP.  It’s time to make the transition into doing ATP for a living.  I have no idea what that looks like, though.  By the end of it, I’m crying.  The other documentary was about how horrible sugar is.  Duh, don’t need to convince me.  But, I liked the way it presented the information simply.  It’s also time to get back to eating healthy.  That documentary was called “Is Sugar the New Fat?”.

Links to the videos if you are interested:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5541030/

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/506986051805/is-sugar-the-new-fat

Jakarta had the fastest immigration ever.  There were no lines and I was through in under 3 minutes.  I found the airport hotel pretty easily.  The staff was very nice.  The rooms are above the terminal so I heard ding ding ding for hours as announcements were being made below me.  The lady at the dive shop that I’ve been emailing told me hotels were easy to find and cheaper in person so I didn’t need to book one ahead of time.  I thought I’d try this because I was pressed for time and because why not wing it and see what happens.  I looked at some of the hotels on line a couple nights ago and found a couple that looked ok.  By the time I got to Jakarta I was not ok with winging it.  I don’t have a place to stay, I don’t have a plan and I’m not happy about it.  My whole body is tight, not that it wasn’t already, but this has definitely added to it.  I stayed up late looking at hotels.  The two I liked were already booked.  Literally every other one on line either had horrible reviews or was over $150 per night.  I contacted two, one through their own website and another through airb&b, gave up and went to bed.  Thank god the ding ding ding had finished for the evening.

I got up early and looked at my emails.  I guess when I had hit the button that said “make booking inquiry” I had really made a booking through airb&b.  I was just trying to ask some questions and was going to book one of the two places this morning.  So, I guess I inadvertently made a decision.  There were several emails back and forth as I was getting packed up.  Some didn’t quite make sense, but I figured I’d work it out when I got there.  I figured I just had to go downstairs to check in, but left extra time for dealing with the possibility of extra suitcase drama.  Wow – so glad I left extra time.  I was in Terminal 2 and my flight was leaving from Terminal 3.  The hotel had a free shuttle and everyone was very helpful.  Terminal 3 is really far away.  It took over 15 minutes of drive time.  Terminal 3 is a big bright shiny new terminal – very worldly indeed.  I only had to pay $25 for the extra bag this time.  That’s more reasonable.  Right before I got on the plane I figured out why the hotel emails were weird.  I was emailing both hotels thinking it was only one.  I almost had booked two hotels.  The guy at the other hotel was not too happy about my mixup.  I got to Labuan Bajo just fine.  The guy picking me up from the airport was late so I had to deal with pushy taxi drivers for a while.  No matter how many times I told them someone was picking me up, they kept wanting to know where I was going, who I was waiting for, what’s my name.  If you were the person picking me up, you would know that.  I finally told one where I was staying and that someone was picking me up.  He actually called the hotel and put me on the phone.  The hotel is asking why I called.  I didn’t call you, the taxi driver thinks I’m stupid and that he’s going to harass me into his taxi.  My ride finally came.  Labuan Bajo is not worldly.  It makes rural Thailand look worldly.  It reminds me of the rural parts of Bali where there is one tiny broke down road in town.  The road is lined with small hotels and scuba shops with 8 or 9 restaurants and some shops.  I can see why all the hotels had such bad reviews. Nothing in this town is up to western standards.  My room is ok.  It is real basic.  It has wifi that doesn’t really work, air conditioning that doesn’t really work, hot water for 1.5 minutes, a lot of stairs, a decent restaurant and a very loud water pump behind my room that squeals every few seconds.  It’s costing me $41 per night and is probably worth $8.  But judging from some of the other places I walked by, I’m doing good.  Every hotel review I read complained about the 4:30am wake up call from the nearby mosque.  I already heard the evening call to prayer and it is insanely loud so there will be no escaping 4:30am.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore