1_i agreed to what

Steve and Jemjahn go to Thailand, 2003

1. I agreed to What?

I still don’t know how I got hornswaggled into it.

Jemjahn had managed to go to Thailand about five times in the past ten years by herself just fine. Didn’t need me to hold her hand. Didn’t need me to get her from one flight to another.

But it would have been nice if I could sit with her in airplanes and airports. Give her a shoulder to rest on, carry her bags, help her in the many little ways a traveler can use a hand.

So a few months ago, after I mumble something like “I hate to see you travel all that way by yourself,” the next thing I know we’re buying two (!) airfare tickets. What happened? How’d she do that? When did I blink?

Anyway, it has happened, I am going. We’ll fly out of Augusta, not Atlanta, which means a quick 15-minute trip to our local small airport instead of a 3-hour drive to one of America’s largest.

Before leaving we had our mail and paper stopped, asked our nearest neighbors to keep an eye on the place, and proceeded to pack.

Between the two of us we were allowed four suitcases, and for a short two-week stay with relatives, really needed only one.

But:

a) Jem always brings over plenty of clothes for her relatives and friends, especially old Army BDUs, which she says are prized by her old friends in farming and construction, and

b) Having grown up there so she should have known better, Jem was under the impression that it gets really cold in Thailand in December.

So we packed as if for Siberia. Gloves, sweatshirts, scarves. So help me, even long underwear. Between the dress clothes we never wore and the winter clothes we never wore and the work clothes we gave as gifts, we needed every one of the four suitcases, and more.

Accurately it was:

	2 suitcases
	1 Army duffel bag full of uniforms and old jeans
	1 black plastic lockable box for fragile items that we figured to leave behind for her sister
	2 large gym bags, and
	1 large cloth shopping bag with yet more stuff that I told Jem we wouldn’t be able to check in as luggage nor take into the plane either, but was proven wrong.

And the bag turned out to be quite useful, as Jem occasionally reminded me.

We left Augusta on a cold, windy December morning carrying winter coats for use as blankets on the flight.

Oh, and for the numbing chill of Thailand’s bitter winters.

next: Flight to Bangkok