The Weekend before the Adventure Begins: Saturday night we had a send off party with some friends at Dockweiler Beach, complete with the prerequisite bonfire (and a few fireworks courtesy of some unnamed friends). Sunday was to be a day of last minute packing and planning...but it turned out to be a day of hectic rearranging. The Bangkok International Airport has been shut down for several days due to protestors seeking a new election and asking the Prime Minister to step down. Apparently this dispute has been escalating for several months now. Our timing is perfect, that is if we want to make sure that we have obstacles to jump over. We had hoped that the dispute would resolve, but it does not look likely to occur before we depart. Our flight is/was for Monday, December 1 - LAX-Toyko-Bangkok-Kathmandu. United has confirmed that the Bangkok flights have been cancelled and they can re-route us but cannot get us into Kathmandu until January!
We have already had too many delays, so after over an hour of searching, a brilliant and patient reservations agent (I know they are few and far between but we actually found one purely by accident) re-routed us via Singapore and then Bangladesh. That is as close as she could get us to Kathmandu, from there we would be on our own. So that now left us to continue our packing, well, I continued through the night...all night and morning as it turns out. All my best intentions of being prepared were unfulfilled as I sat on the floor of the guest apartment our friend had so gratuitously let us crash in for the last couple of weeks trying to decide what else could get eliminated. I really wanted my pack to be under 35 lbs. Considering the pack itself weighs close to 6 lbs that really doesn't leave much room. At 7 a.m John's brother arrived to help pack away a few last items in our garage, and accompany us to the airport. We were frantic! But, we eventually made it to the airport in one piece and with a sigh of relief we started our journey...
