I finally made it to Thailand, but I have no idea what time zone or day it is, so bear with me. It's 11 hours ahead of the east coast here, so it's Sunday morning. All in all, the trip wasn't bad but there were some pretty insufferable parts. This is going to be a really long post, and I'm sorry.
I left NYC on Friday afternoon, where I boarded a Cathay Pacific flight bound for Hong Kong. Here are some pictures of the gate I had to wait to board my flight.
The flight was 16 hours nonstop and I was unfortunately stuck in the middle seat. I was lucky enough to have an awesome entertainment center at my disposal, which I took a picture of:
I managed to watch five movies, Crazy Heart (which is excellent and totally reaffirms my lust of Colin Farrell), Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (which is fun, but not great), Invictus (a great movie and so appropriate), It's Complicated (Alec Baldwin is hilarious and Meryl Streep is just awesome), and finally How to Train Your Dragon (which I've already seen but I love it). During my movie watching, Cathay Pacific tries to stuff you as much as they can, so you keep coming back to the airline and pay the high airfares. Here are some pictures of the food that they fed us.
This was lunch, which was served right after we got to cruising altitude. 
This is a crazy Chinese airline tradition, where they serve a snack of Cup of Noodles between lunch and dinner. Dinner was served a quarter to midnight, so my dining habits and internal clock is really messed up. 
Dinner was some beef and potatoes concoction which was pretty good.I have to admit, I kind of like airline food and Cathay Pacific's food is pretty good. As a result of all the food and drink, I had to get up and use the facilities and to stretch but it was difficult with my seat mate.The flight was crowded and I was seated next to a very inconsiderate aisle seatmate. Since my seatmate had an aisle seat and there were two other people sitting on the other side of him, you would figure that he would be considerate about us getting up to use the facilities. But clearly, that is not the case. He is by no means a skinny man or obese, but he had to clutter his seat pocket and area with I kid you not, a dozen newspapers in both Chinese and English. I was fine with the clutter at first since I didn't have to get up to use the facilities yet. However, after hour 6, I had to get up. I asked my seatmate to get up, but he just moved his newspapers out of the way and expected me to climb over him. Is it really that hard to get up???!!! You're on a 16+ hour flight and you're not getting up at every opportunity? I find that crazy. At this point I had to ponder whether to give him the butt or the crotch. I gave him the butt. I nearly ended up in his lap. I thought maybe it was just a one time thing, but nope, when the lady sitting in the window seat, she had to crawl over the both of us because he wouldn't let me out. Besides the bad seatmate and the constantly crying baby, it was a decent flight.
After that I had a 3 hour layover in HKG, which is one of the larger airports I've been in. What drove me crazy about the airport was that there was not a single working outlet anywhere. I wanted to charge my netbook and phone, but none of the outlets worked. The funny thing about that was there were charging stations everywhere, but none of them had power! There were so many stores in the airport, but very few food stalls. I wanted something to drink since I was so dehydrated from the flight, but I had to walk to kingdom come to find some food or drink. Now I know how the Hong Kongese stay so skinny, you have to work for the food and drink, since I walked at least a mile in the airport. My layover went pretty quickly since I had to walk all over the place.
Then it was time for my flight to Bangkok, which was the worst flight of my trip. When I got on the plane, it smelled. I had a window seat next to a European woman, who was traveling with other family members who were all over the plane. She asked me about five minutes after I sat down if I would change seats with her granddaughter. I said fine, since I think that's a reasonable request to grant a family. However, I was totally set up. The person that the granddaughter was sitting next to stank. I mean he was ripe. He was sweating, probably from running down the giant terminal in HKG, I thought I would pass out. Since the flight was so full, there were no empty seats elsewhere. His BO was so bad, the people around me complained about it, but I couldn't say anything because, how do you tell the flight attendant that the guy sitting right next to you stank without hurting his feelings? I sucked it up and bore it for the 2+ hour flight. The flight attendant did come by and sprayed air freshener around us, but it didn't help too much.
They fed us on the 2+ hour flight, some fish and rice thing, which was pretty good.I bolted off the flight when we landed in Bangkok, since most of the other people stayed on the flight since it was off to Mumbai.
The Bangkok airport is also huge, which involved a lot of walking for me. I think I managed to walk all of my food off. I wasn't sure if I had to go through immigration first, or if I go straight to my transfer flight. I walked all over the airport to ask someone, but since it was almost midnight, it was pretty deserted. After about half an hour of walking, I found someone and I had to go through immigration and then go check back into the domestic terminal.
After I got through immigration, the check in counters at the domestic terminal was closed. I definitely wasn't alone since there were lots of people camped out on the chairs. Most of them appeared to be American or Australian backpackers with their rucksacks and guidebooks. I had about a 5+ hour layover, so I walked everywhere. The airport is pretty nice and I managed to take a couple of pictures of it.
There were a couple of restaurants open, but I wasn't hungry at that point. I managed to stumble upon the US-England World Cup soccer game being broadcast in one of the restaurants. A large crowd was gathering outside of the restaurants to watch and I joined them. It was fun, but I couldn't really see much of it since the TV was so small. I went to the all night mini mart there and decided to buy something to eat. I was a little shocked at how cheap things were in the airport. I got a bottle of Coke and a pretty big bag of chips for 55 baht, which is like $1.75. Then it was time for my Khon Kaen flight.The flight was pretty empty, I had an entire row by myself and the flight was only 45 minutes long. Even during a 45 minute flight, Thai Airways felt the need to feed us, but I declined the food since I was sleeping. When I landed in Khon Kaen, all I could see was a tiny airport. I was getting nervous since I was supposed to meet some of the grad students at KKU and they were going to take me to my hotel. The sweetest group of women and girls greeted me. They had a large sign with my name printed on it. Ann, Nongnuch (grad students at KKU), Nongnuch's sister and daughter greeted me at the airport, and they were very nice. The children didn't speak English, but Ann and Nongnuch were pretty good. We piled into Nongnuch's pickup truck and headed to the university. I have to say that Thai drivers are scary! They don't obey stop signs or right of ways, the only thing they seem to obey are lights. There are also a lot of dinosaur statues (like the ones you see in museum dioramas) in town and I find that fascinating.
We got to the Kwanmor Hotel at KKU and we couldn't check in yet, so they took me to breakfast at the hotel restaurant, which was really nice of them. They wouldn't take my money, so I'm going to have to take them out to dinner some night. I've settled into my hotel, and I think I'm going to take a nap now, so I'll write more tomorrow when I begin my first day looking at the KKU skeletal collections. I'm really excited!
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