In flight and arriving

If you haven't had the pleasure to fly over 16 hours in a single day, you haven't lived! I had stayed up the night before and when it was "bedtime" in the far east, i took my Ambien (R) and nodded off to a great 8 hours sleep on the plane, cramped in the last row with no room to move... thank heaven for the Ambien (R)! The really odd thing was, after i slept 8 hours there was still over 4 hours of flight left...

we arrived in the city's large airport and to call it large is an understatement. After locating our bags and proceeding through customs, we boarded our tour bus accompanied by our guide, j. Over here, many choose "American names" and j chose his because it was phonetically close to his given name.

the city, has over 20 times the residents i think is large...

One of the things which strikes me quite unexpected is how similar things are here... the highways are large and wide, all the cars are midsize sedans or larger, the road signs with exit information are the same color green, and there are billboards everywhere... if you changed the language, you could be in any major metropolitain area... the differences comes when i see where people live, the density of bodies in a street, the number of motor-scooters and bicycles...

After checking into our hotel, we eat supper at a great little restaurant. We eat family style with all the food in the center on a lazy susan. the food is very good and most on the trip who look bleary-eyed before supper, look better after they have eaten...

It was a bit stuffy in our room, so b and i asked about air conditioning because there was a thermostat on the wall which read "cool." House keeping called and told me they do not provide "cold wind." They only give us "hot wind" because it gets cold at night...

Slept like a baby...