Day 7: 7 Hour Layover Challenge

Friday, April 21, 2017

          Today was a very fast-paced day. We had a layover in Bangkok, so today was scavenging in Bangkok while it was 100 degrees outside. We went to temples, we rode mopeds, boats, and did a lot of other cool things. We were melting all day. My favorite parts were riding the mopeds and the lovely foot massage. We will be in Sri Lanka for the next week or so so we won't have wifi. We will keep you posted when we can. Until next time!! ;)

Daddy's View:

Sydney had to jot those notes in 10 minutes in the boarding area after a long day.  We're in Sri Lanka now, it's about 2am, and she fell asleep almost as soon as we opened the hotel room door here, so I'll give the activity summary.

We left Hanoi this morning at 10:30am local.  We got to Bangkok at noon, where we would have a layover until our 10pm flight.  In that time we had to do a Layover Challenge - 10 scavenges that we could choose from.  It was pretty cool - we had the kick-off huddle right outside our gate, got our books of challenges, and took off.

We jumped on the train, headed to the city center, hopped on the back of two moped taxis, and were swerving dangerously in and out of traffic less than an hour after landing.  If we were chasing a car and I was firing a gun and I believed in Scientology, it would have felt like a Mission Impossible movie.  Here is a pic of Sydney dodging an evil villain on the red moped.

Here's an example of how the GSH makes these challenges fun:  we had to do three modes of transportation during the day.  Easy, no problem.  Except one of them had to be a boat.  The below pic is us enjoying a Thai ferry... not to be confused with Andy Samberg's boat.

Then we had to pick one of four places to eat.  Since you can't consult a phone or computer, this was lots of asking people.  We eventually found one of them, down an alley on a pier... a total hole in the wall, with a beautiful view of the river and *fantastic* food.  The pic below is before eating red hot Tom Yum Gai soup outdoors in 105 degrees and 90% humidity.  The after pic was a lot sweatier.

Another scavenge was getting a picture of a live elephant.  Sounds easy, right?  Go to the zoo, or just walk down the street, it's Bangkok, there must be elephants everywhere.  Well apparently there was some municipal legal changes several years ago - now, no elephants in Bangkok.  Only one team found an elephant - I'm sure we'll find out the story tomorrow at breakfast.

The activities were memorable, but the overwhelming feeling we had today was... confidence.

A week ago we were in Houston.  7 days later, we flew to a city about which we knew nothing, in a language that we couldn't read or speak, without any guidebook preplanning, no use of a smartphone or Internet at all, and we went from an airport gate to finishing a bunch of complex scavenges around a huge city in less than five hours.  FO-SHIZZLE-MY-NIZZLE!

It's like we've unlocked a part of our brains that we all have, but just haven't been allowed - or forced - to use.  It's the real belief that you can just go and figure it out.

One particular moment felt like Sydney was flapping a new set of wings, feeling herself a bit.

We were in the train coming into the city from the airport.  On the map, we could keep on the same train and end up a bit away from where we wanted, but of course could get a taxi.  Or we could make a transfer onto a different subway system to get us really close to where we wanted to go.

I was the one who was hesitant - I remember thinking "Man, we know this'll get us almost there, I don't even know how to get onto that subway, let's play it safe and stay on this."

Sydney was just very matter of fact, "Let's go, we'll figure it out."  And we did - it was a different station, we had to go up and down and around and get new tickets, ended up making friends with an Australian guy... and we figured it out.

After we finished the day of tasks, we were getting foot massages (that was one of the scavenges... Bill and Pamela - trip organizers extraordinaire - are not barbarians, after all), and felt proud of ourselves.  We felt like, if we were abducted like in the movie "Taken" (which Sydney hasn't seen b/c it's rated R) and the kidnappers blindfolded us and flew us around the world, took away our phones, and dropped us into a strange city...we could find Liam Neeson.

I know that the Travel Gods are licking their chops to feed us some humble pie now that we're feeling ourselves a bit.  We'll survive, though - I'm just glad we're building these muscles.