Day 42: The Change-Up

Listening: Rid me of the problem. Do all that you can. Keep me in a daydream. Keep me goin' strong. You don't wanna save me. Sad is my song.

What's my problem? Changing a flight takes forever.

Well, here's the update. I changed two of my flights, so now I fly from Bangkok to Hong Kong on April 8th and I fly from Hong Kong to Los Angeles on April 15th. This means that I'll have five and a half or six days in Los Angeles before heading back to the east coast for Brian's wedding.

I have realized that it's going to be a pretty big shit show when I get back to Boston. I'll be arriving home on the night of the 21st. The next morning, I'll be heading down to NYC for Brian's wedding. The 23rd is the rehearsal dinner. The 25th is the actual wedding. Then I have to come back to Boston, get my shit together, and get back down to the island sometime around May first. I can just tell what kind of mess I'll be. I guess that's the life of a traveler though, huh?

I finally decided to take Mei's and Jessica's (another hot worker at Hanoi Backpackers) suggestion and go Sapa for a few days. I'm going on a three night organized tour and then I extended one night more so I could walk around on my own or rent a motorbike to check out the things that I feel I might have missed. I hope it's nice.

I get back to Hanoi at around five in the morning on Monday morning, and Mei was nice enough to book me for a bed when I get back for free, even though I'll be leaving later on that night to go to Hue. It's amazing how much you fall in love on the trail.

I'm leaving the bulk of my gear here in Hanoi and am only taking my day pack. It's packed to the gills right now. I heard that it could be cold in Sapa, so I'm bringing all of my warmest (which isn't much). It's only four nights. I wonder how bad it could get. Hopefully I'll get a nice day or two in there when the fog lifts, the clouds descend, and I can see the mountains. I'm pretty excited.

I'm a bit worried about the whole night train thing. I hope they're as nice as the night train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, but I'm not holding my breath. I think that it'll be more like the sleeper from Frankfurt to Prague. Twenty-five minutes and I'm off. Here's to hopefully meeting nicer locals.