Miracle

passports, vaccination cards, page one of the itinerary

The title to this post is probably a bit dramatic, but on this last night of our Asia trip, I have to say I feel like pulling the trip off has just about been a miracle, at least to me.  Because I didn't have anything to do with it.  I just went along for the ride.  The guy who made it all possible is this guy:

Mark has done what I could never do.  I just don't have the patience for it.  He's arranged for:

Ten flights
4 van rides
1 bus ride
5 hotels
4 countries
Plus pick ups to and from the airports, day trips/excursions, research on restaurants and evening entertainment, currency exchanges, and the list goes on.  

This list doesn't even include the Africa portion of this trip, which is quite a thing all by itself.  I watched Mark struggle for hours with the internet in Mekele just to make one hotel booking.  Then he'd go at it again the next day, and the next.  And once we actually made it to Asia, somehow, he even managed to give me three days all to myself, one in Thailand and the other two in Cambodia.

Am I spoiled?  Yeah, duh.  But as I look across this lounge (the Miracle Lounge in the airport in Bangkok, where Kenya Airways sends all its customers that have been screwed kabisa, which means completely in Swahili) by such things as 8 hour delays, I see poor Mark stretched out over two chairs trying to get some sleep and I'm sure he'd agree that in spite of how much work he did to get this trip off the ground, our entire family is more than a little spoiled to have taken this incredible trip.  And even now - as we spend the whole night in Bangkok at the airport, when we'd hoped to be somewhere over the ocean and on our way to Nairobi - I look around at this comfortable lounge with the buffet of food and the mostly sleeping people and babies and am filled with a sense that this has been something of a miracle.  That it all came together as it did, and that no one got hit by a scooter, sick from eating insects, or wounded from a skirmish that you'd think would be inevitable when five people spend almost every waking moment together navigating...well, just look at the list in bold above.  

So thank you, Mark Woodward.  You're our hero.  And thank you to our amazing hosts.  It's funny (and a little sad), every single city we visited ended with my asking Mark a little wistfully, "Don't you think we could be happy here?"  And he'd always reply by reminding me this was VACATION.  Maybe, but our hosts sure made us feel like we were right at home.

The Christmas tree goes up in the Woodward house
way later than it goes up in the shopping districts of KL

The guys and Reeve

Mike and Caroline on the Mekong River. 

In front of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi with Nathan and Kristi

Markus, Eli, Daniel, Matias, and Micah in Hanoi

Anyway, somewhat miraculously, the fun times aren't over.  At some point we will exit the Miracle Lounge and board that elusive Kenya Airways flight and go back to the motherland.  

Kenya, here we come!

For more pictures and a little photo tour I made on google maps, check out the old facebook page.  I tried to include pictures that aren't just the usual travelogue pictures and I've tried to embed the map here but no can do, and at this hour it seems my brain refuses to figure it out.  

Oh, and first place in last week's quiz goest to Jannie Armstrong, who came back to claim his rightful place as head honcho of all Southeast Asia knowledge, being a former resident of Laos, himself.  Second place goes to the amazing Nancy Woodward, faithful reader and loyal grandmother.  Alas, there can be no third prize, for there was no third entrant.  

PS, Forget Hazal.  We saw Star Wars!!!!!!  On opening day!  And it was goooood.