ILLinois

Greetings from Chicago! After a terrific (albeit bizarre) last night in Bangkok (it involved my Dutch girls, a transexual beauty pageant, 3 hot French med students, and Chris and me karaokeing in Thai...all to be blogged about when I have more time), I packed my bag as best I could and hopped in a cab to Bangkok International Airport. This was on Friday at 4am Bangkok time. Freedman met me at a Caribou Coffee on Halsted St. in Chicago yesterday at 5:30pm Chicago time. Time lapse: 25.5 hours.

As if 25 hours of non-stop travel weren't enough, my body finally gave in to illness. All throughout my journey, I've been very impressed with how well I've stood up to the elements. While my friends were succumbing to fevers, sore throats, and an unexpected amount of constipation, I was right as rain. (Well, except for that unfortunate -- but short-lived -- stomach thing when I left India.) It was already quite late on my last night in Bangkok when I started feeling a bit stuffed up. I assumed that a missed Zyrtec was to blame.

I was wrong. By the time I disembarked in Tokyo, I was rocking a full-blown cold. I rallied last night and went out for a bit with Andrew and his roommate, Jeff, but my throat was killing me by around 11pm. If this is the price I must pay for a bitchin' holiday (and 24 hours with Freedman), then so be it.

What little I've seen of Chicago is nice. When Freedman gave me the option of taking a $40 taxi or a $1.75 train/bus ride, I opted for the latter. (There was no way I could stomach paying the cost of 4 nights in a SE Asian hotel for a ride.) The train here is relatively nice. It's like what would result if the Boston Green Line and the DC Metro lines that run above ground in Virginia had a baby. My bus experience was also quite lovely until my stop came along and the back doors didn't open. In DC, this is usually resolved by merely shouting, "Back door, please," so that's what I did. After getting stared at for a good 10 seconds by the entire bus, the driver turned around and said, very politely, "It pushes open."

While I realize it was a perfectly reasonable mistake, I felt really effing stupid. Maybe it's because my gaffes in Asia were almost always excusable. Farangs aren't supposed to know better. Indeed, the farang label was a terrific personal excuse for everything that went wrong.

Alas, I am farang no more.