Steve and I are home from our epic Southeast Asia adventure!
At least, I think we are.
We got home on a Friday (Thursday? Saturday?)
While many details of this trip remain with me (like hand-feeding bunches of bananas to a hangry elephant), the time frame remains infuriatingly elastic. Intellectually, I was aware that we would be traversing many time zones and the international date line to boot, but physically/emotionally I was blindsided. “Spring ahead, fall back” is bad enough—try losing, then gaining, entire days!
The airline made something of an effort to acclimate us, turning off all the cabin lights and closing the window shades to mimic night, then later serving up some congee—Chinese rice porridge--to encourage us to rise and shine. But it was still a shock to the system, especially our return voyage. I mean, I’m generally eager to put my past day in the rearview mirror (all those pesky missteps of mine!) anyway, and cross fingers for a better morrow. Well, presto! I got my wish while flying east to west across the Pacific Ocean. We embarked from JFK at 1 AM on a Wednesday, and landed, 17 hours later, in Vietnam--which would normally have been still Wednesday, but was instead Thursday. Who needed Wednesday anyway, right?
En route home it felt even weirder—we literally got to experience Friday, November 28th twice! Luckily, we were airborne the first go-round, and passed out from jet lag most of the second (so maybe we never experienced Friday, November 28th at all?) And Thanksgiving this year fell by the wayside entirely. Our Turkey Day repast centered on gua bao (steamed buns with pork belly).
The whole thing is very Twilight Zone-ish, and I marvel at those who can blithely criss-cross the date line on a regular basis. For me, my body clock was totally screwed up for days and days; this restless sleeper/3 AM riser morphed into a world-class snoozer who was only AWAKE a few hours a day. Steve fared a bit better, but as a whole, our abode embodied the name of the hotel we stayed at in Thailand (it was called, kid-you-not, “Sleepy House”).
Thinking of it more, the fact that our calendar is all a-jumble makes perfect sense. Our Asia experience was jam-packed with the exotic and new. Cars there are few and far between (bikes and motorbikes RULE), traffic lights are unusual, and at the Thailand/Myanmar border you have to switch from left-side to right-side of the road driving! The three countries we visited used three quite different spoken languages, but also three distinctive sets of written characters. And when hunger strikes, what beats a hot bowl of noodle soup? In Taipei that would be “niu rou mian," in Chiang Rai it would likely be “khao soi”, and in Hanoi it would, of course, be "phở "(which is also the Vietnamese word for “street,” but that’s for another convo).
On to Christmas decorating!
Yawn.
And maybe another nap.
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I am an author (of five books, numerous plays, poetry and freelance articles,) a retired director (of Spiritual Formation at a Lutheran church,) and a producer (of five kids).
I write about my hectic, funny, perfectly imperfect life.
Please visit my website: www.eliseseyfried.com or email me at eliseseyf@gmail.com.
