Yes, I’m off for the tropics tomorrow. My flight leaves for Bangkok in the afternoon from Casablanca, arrives in Doha, Qatar around 5:30 a.m. Saturday, leaves Doha about 8:30 a.m. and arrives in Bangkok around 8 p.m. Of course, this is Qatar Airlines, whose flights are invariably delayed, so those times will probably shift a few hours forward. As I’ve posted before, QA has top notch service in the air, but it leaves something to be desired in its ground service.
Anyway, this will probably be my last post for a while, but I will try to write as I travel around Laos and Thailand for the next 6 weeks. I’ll take the overnight train to Nong Khai on the evening of July 4th. Until then, I have to go to the U.S. Embassy to get some more passport pages, check in with the Korean Embassy to find out how long it takes to get my visa prepared (I’ll do that in August, just before leaving for Korea), store my big bags and computer until August, buy a ticket to Korea, and look up a few contacts at one of the schools in Bangkok and look up a former colleague who is teaching at a university there. Whew! I’ll be busy, but not so busy that I won’t be able to chow down on curry, seafood and pad thai, not to mention fresh mangos, pineapple and such. Happy 4th of July to all my fellow Americans. More later.