It’s Saturday two days after I left Dubai and a lot has happened that I may or may not tell you about. It started as all trips start with the taxi ride to the airport, the hopes and the expectations of a great trip running through my head. I know that once I step out of the airport everything will be different, but I never know how much different the new country will be. The one thing that I do believe is that my first impression will usually determine whether I enjoy a country or not. It’s because of this that I always try to keep my mind open and look forward to every event. Sometimes bad events turn out to be not so bad, and a little hassle can be a good thing.

So why am I making such a big deal about this? Well I screwed up. I didn’t have the visa I needed to get to Myanmar so I’m in Bangkok right now. Not that that is such a bad thing, I love Bangkok, it has a vibrancy that kind of overwhelms but is also kind of welcoming. The problems have been with me trying to fix everything and still get to Myanmar by Sunday before my tour starts.

See, this is where I’ve debated whether or not to tell the story, it’s rather long and there is no doubt that most people reading it will find it funny, I am also convinced that it will sound as if I’m complaining, but this is furthest from the truth, like I mentioned I want to keep my mind open. So let me say that it was a “butterfly effect” when I lost my boarding pass in the Bangkok airport. I went to get a new one printed, but they wouldn’t print it because I didn’t have the right paperwork to enter Myanmar. So I went to get a Thailand visa so I could go to the Myanmar embassy, but then I remember that my bag is going on without out me. I manage to get them to stop it and send it to baggage claim, only they lose it for about an hour. So then I make it to the embassy and apply, which is a story in itself, but I get the big thing taken care of, now to find a hotel. I was settling into my room when I realized that I had to make a new flight reservation. Turns out that they were going to charge me full amount, which didn’t seem fair to me. So I make some new calls, and I get a partial refund of nearly two-thirds, only they don’t take credit cards and they close at 430, and at that time it was 4, but they were open until 11 the next morning. Since there wasn’t anything else I could do, I decided to have a beer and chill out. I fell asleep within 15 minutes, lasting maybe a total of a half of a beer was gone, and I woke up at 8 in the morning. I had been totally stressed, hadn’t eaten anything, and had only about 3 hours of sleep in the last 36 hours… my body just decided to shutdown.

I got up this morning well rested; in fact I spent about 5 minutes walking around my room mumbling that I couldn’t believe that I slept so long. J I didn’t really like the hotel that I was in, so I found a new one on the Internet that I stayed in before, and it said that they had three rooms available, so I pack my backpack and head to get my new ticket to Yangon. The taxi drops me off at the wrong place, but it was close, and after arguing with the security guard for 15 minutes, I finally call the airline again and she tells me that they’re around the corner. My bad. I even gave the taxi driver a huge tip because I thought that my problems were ending… I think if I had more money I’d have been throwing it out the window in shear joy that everything was turning out as it should. Stupid. So I get the ticket and get back to the hotel, grab my bag and catch a taxi to the new hotel, only they don’t have rooms. Hmmm… I wasn’t going to argue at this point, so I get online and find another, and that’s where I am now. I leave for Yangon tomorrow morning at 915 and meet up with my tour later on.  Oh, and as a side note, as I was unpacking at the new place my boarding pass that I thought I lost fell onto the bed. This was the boarding pass that started the “butterfly effect” when they wouldn’t print me out a new one.