Repatriation

Last minute delays and scheduling changes have thrown a monkey wrench into the works, but I am now back in the US. The flight from Korea landed on time in LA, but there were no gates open to offload the plane. With less than an hour to change planes already from the international to domestic terminals, it just wasn't in the cards. Delta was willing to reschedule my flight, but it will be later rather than sooner. Still waiting to see how that's going to turn out and where and when exactly I will end up.

At this point I have now been awake and traveling for nearly 36 hours. Here's the schedule so far. I am extremely exhausted and just trying to put one foot in front of the other.

3 Hours: Chiang Mai Police Station, Chiang Mai THailand

9 Hours: Immigration Control, Chiang Mai Thailand

2 Hours: Chiang Mai International Airport Immigration office

4 Hours: Korean Airlines flight 668 to Seoul Korea

7 Hours: Incheon International airport, Seoul South Korea

10 Hours: Korean Airlines Flight 17 to LAX

????? Hours: Los Angeles International airport

I tried to do my best to anticipate and prepare myself for "reverse culture shock", but I had no idea how it would affect me. It is intense! I truly feel like a fish out of water. I did wander by the LAX international boarding terminal earlier this afternoon and passed a couple Thai buddhist monks on the sidewalk outside. I gave them the usual greeting in thier own language and customs and they just about fell over in astonishment! We had a nice brief chat in Thai about thier favorite temple sites in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. That was about the most normal I felt all day. I bought a hamburger just for the heck of it and it was horrible. Adding insult to injury was knowing how much it cost. Same as a weeks worth of food where I had just come from. There is a Thai food shop here in the airport, but the prices were more than the lousy hamburger. Definitely not the same as what I'm used to.

More updates as soon as I can.