My Asian Vacation

I've been trying to decide how to write about my recent travels, and I've had several ideas.

There's the bare itinerary:

• April 13th - 11:15am Vancouver to Inchon Intl, arrived 3:10pm April 14th
• April 17th - 8:45am Gimpo Airport to Jeju Island
• April 20th - 1:15pm Jeju Island to Inchon Intl
• April 20th - 7:25pm Inchon Intl to Naha Airport, Okinawa Japan
• April 25th - 9:15am Naha Airport to Inchon Intl
• April 25th - 8:30pm Inchon Intl to Bangkok (5.5 hour flight, arrive at 11:55pm)
• April 27th - 7:15pm Night train from Bangkok to Surat Thani, arrived 7:20 am, then bus and ferry to Thong Sala on Ko Pha Ngan, taxi to Ao Thang Nai Pan Noi (arrived about 3:30 pm)
• May 1st - 10:00am taxi/noon ferry/5pm bus to Surat Thani airport for 7:15pm flight to Bangkok
• May 1st - 10:30pm Bangkok to Inchon Intl (5.5 hour flight, arrive at 5:55am local time)
• May 4th - 4:30pm Inchon to Vancouver, arrive 10:30am May 4th

There's the David Foster Wallace "A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again"-type impressionistic summary of what I've witnessed and learned:

I have seen Thai families of four riding on a single scooter, all without helmets; I have seen a military member exclaim "I'm an American!" as a reason to allow him to let his bullet/bottle opener on a flight from Japan to Korea; I have tasted Pocari Sweat (nastier than Mountain Dew); I have listened to Korean and Japanese commentary blasted from loudspeakers hidden in trees and in the depths of caves; I have seen buddhas of gold, emerald, marble and wood; I have eaten a Seoul subway junkfood called Man Joo; I have had pizza with corn on it; I have been to markets with live eels and entire pig's heads for sale; I have proved myself a true Canadian by immediately learning how to order beer in every country I visited; I have peered briefly into Thai families huddles around TVs in shacks meters from a rail line; I have seen cockroaches bigger than any cockroach has the right to be; I have learned that Japanese schoolgirls really do dress like that; I have learned to roughly tabulate the Canadian dollar equivalent for three separate currencies; I have been served kim chee with breakfast; I know what 35 degrees Celsius feels like; I have had my toes nibbled by fish in the Gulf of Thailand; I have learned that I want to do this again.

And, of course, there are the photos (including a rare shot of yours truly.)

And that only really touches the surface. Hopefully something more coherent once the jet lag wears off.