America, f*#@ yeah!

We somehow managed to surprise most of our friends and family (damn you Ian!) with our early return home that we had secretly been planning for months.  Unfortunately, we didn’t count on the airport being taken over by anti-government protesters for an entire week, stranding somewhere around 300,000 people in Bangkok.  What was initially a very frustrating situation for us (our flight from Bangkok to Seattle was canceled and we had already booked a flight from Seattle to Baltimore 3 days later) turned out to be a great end to our vacation.  The Thai government was crediting stranded tourists $60/person/day to stay in participating hotels in Bangkok so we were able to stay in an incredible 5 star hotel and enjoyed 3 free buffet meals every day.  Kelly had just worked out in the hotel fitness room and was sitting by the pool on the 26th floor when the airline called to say we could leave on a flight departing from a military airport the next morning.  We were incredibly lucky to only be stuck in Bangkok for about 30 hours beyond our original departure time.  We know someone who was stranded for 2 weeks.  We were unlucky to have to hire a taxi to drive us the 150km or so to the military airport and more unlucky that the taxi driver got insanely lost on the way there, stopping for directions whenever he saw anyone on the side of the road (which was not so frequent at 3am).  In true Thai fashion, NO ONE knew where to go.  Finally a bus driver pointed us in the right direction and we were the first flight to leave the airport that morning.

We were happy to have a longer-than-originally-planned layover in Seoul and were able to spend the night in the city and do some sightseeing the next day.  Then on to Seattle for one night before catching our already scheduled flight to Baltimore.  After two solid days of travel and lack of sleep, we couldn’t bear to stick to our original plan of apartment hunting, and instead went out for pizza and belgian beer with friends we had met in Thailand.

So now we’re in MD for about a month before moving to Seattle.  Hope to see everyone soon!  Final Thailand and Korea pics are up now too.