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Ryan, Ann Marie, and myself on our way to Taman Negara National Park

I made it - after 41 hours of almost non-stop travel-if my cross-time-zone math is not mistaken. It's hard to believe that the day before yesterday I was in the jungle in the middle of Malaysia and this morning I woke up in my own bed in Seattle. Air travel is amazing.

My return trip started Saturday morning in Kuala Tahan (right outside Taman Negara National Park) in central Malaysia where we took a 2 hour river boat ride to Kuala Tembeling and transferred to a bus (3 hours) back to KL. I had a few hours to unpack, organize, and repack, eat dinner, and buy a few last souvenirs before I took the light rail to the airport to catch my 2am flight to Shanghai (5 hours). Amazingly I had a whole row to myself, even though the plane looked pretty full otherwise, so I was able to sleep most of the way. In Shanghai I had six hours which went fairly quickly with two hour-long naps...until my flight was delayed two hours. The 10 hour flight didn't seem so bad compared to the 12 hours on the way there! Except for the last 35 minutes...it was so turbulent that many people had their barf bags out (including me!) and I saw two little kids throw up in front of me. I was SURE I was going to loose my breakfast before that plane landed and it is a miracle I didn't. I felt green for hours after we landed. I couldn't bring myself to eat lunch even though I was hungry so I stopped for a smoothy on the way home.

After arriving in Vancouver, BC at 10:30am, I waited in the longest line for immigration I've ever experienced. I was reminded that Canadians are really nice though! It was a good hour and a half before I got my bag and made it to my car in long-term parking. At the border there was a bit of a wait too. I pulled into my driveway at 3pm and went straight to bed for two hours. After grocery shopping and taking care of a few things around the house, I went back to bed at 8pm SURE that I was exhausted enough to sleep for a good 12 hours. But I underestimated the effect of crossing nine time zones (I think). I've been up since 2:45 this morning. I stayed in bed, convinced I would fall back asleep but hunger finally drove me to the kitchen at 4. After trying again to go back to sleep, I finally got up and started a canning project at 6:30. And now, at 8:30, I'm headed to the airport to pick up Ryan!

Southeast Asia is a long ways away, but I would go again in a heartbeat.