Buhbye, Thailand!

Now for our last bit of time in Thailand...que triste! Tuesday we slept in sort of. Later on, Janella went for a massage, I went and sat on the beach. Then we got in our suits to get in the water one last time :( We didn't stay in long at all. At AoNang I'm so paranoid about jellyfish! Also, I hadn't finished packing.
We got all of our stuff together, and then got a songthaew to the bus station in Krabi.

Here's the man who got us our songthaew. I couldn't resist...

We were on the songthaew with a couple from Singapore. Their darling young daughter spoke Malay, I think, but she was doing her times tables. In English. Super smart girl! She also kept staring at me and my braids (which were in awful shape by this time, by the way).
At the bus station, we went to buy our VIP tickets, and they were sold out! Nooooo! So we bought 1st class tickets--about 600 baht, I think. We got our excessive baggage on the bus, then went back inside, only to find out that there was another bus company whose VIP tickets were not sold out. So we went to refund our 1st class tickets. It had honestly been 5 minutes since we bought them, but she charged us 10% of the ticket price to refund them. Annoying. That lady wasn't very nice OR helpful. She wasn't even trying to let us know there were other VIP buses when we were so obviously disturbed on finding out VIP was sold out.
Our bus ride was fine. Our seats were opposite of eachother--Nella in the very front, me in the very back. We left at 5 and stopped for dinner a couple hours after. A very Thai experience.We sat around a table with a few other Thais and shared a meal. They have multiple dishes on the table, and you take from them, and put them on your plate. One person serves everyone rice. The food was good--mostly. Some yummy noodles, some gross scallops, some spiceeeey curry, etc.
I decided to undo my braids with the time on my hands. It took 3 1/2 hours :( For.Ever. Those braids were tiny. I slept at 11 until we arrived in Bangkok at 4. Unfortunately, none of the taxi drivers knew where our hostel was. Our taxi driver stopped multiple times to ask help, and Nella was the one who actually saw it in the end lol. We arrived around 5 at Thong Ta Resort and Spa ($12 a night, super nice), ate breakfast, then paid for early check-in since there was nothing else to do.

Tiniest gecko to date in our room. That silver thing is a towel holder, for some perspective.

Later we decided to get our last-minute souvenirs/gifts shopping done. We took a taxi to MBK--Mah Boon Krong--it's an 8-storey shopping center in Bangkok. It's enormous! Our taxi driver was trying to get us to make stops at the jewelry store and tailor with him. They get gas money if they bring people there. Luckily we weren't noob tourists.
Good times at MBK. We ate at a fastfood place called Santa's haha. It was real good and cheap!

Then we shopped. I bought way too many things--for myself and for my family. Hope they like what I'm bringing since I left that place with 120 baht ($4) to my name haha. It's just so hard to resist buying things here since in the U.S. they'd be triple, quadruple, and sometimes 10 times the price. When Nella tried to bargain with one lady over a t-shirt that was 99 baht, they lady goes, "No! Cannot. 99 baht good price. Cheap cheap leew." I love when they mix Thai and English. "Hello ka" and things like that.

These mannequins are everywhere here

I think we stayed there for over 4 hours. We tried to get a taxi--we wanted them to use the meter since we felt we got gipped in paying 400baht for our ride there. Noone wanted to take us since our place was so far haha. They'd call to us, "Taxi! Tuktuk!" We'd show them the address, and they'd get these really wide eyes and hand back the address to us lol. One taxi driver wanted to charge us 700 baht. Finally we succeeded in getting a taxi on meter. Good thing! It was only 280 baht, I think. But man, that taxi ride was a death ride. I'm really surprised we came out alive. He was driving in the emergency lane of the freeway, weaving in and out of traffic like we were running from the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service, and he was definitely going 140 km/h. Nella kept putting her hat over her eyes because it was so scary to watch out the windshield. What a tense ride that was!
Oh, Thailand. A couple things that were weird for me being there--seeing whitening products everywhere. No, not teeth whitening. Skin whitening. I'd never in my life even heard of that. But it really is everywhere here. I noticed that on their magazines, a majority of them have models who look very Western rather than typically Asian.
Another big thing: she-men! EVERYWHERE. It's always a bit disconcerting to say, "Sawadee ka" to a head of beautiful long hair and a mini skirt, only to have the person turn around, showing a face with masculine features and then say, "Sawadee ka" in the manliest voice ever lol. And these she-men are soooo into being girly. Flipping their hair all the time and being super coquette-ish.
Today (is that even considered today still?) we woke up around 4:30 and took the 5:30 shuttle. At the airport, they have these ginormous, ornate Buddhas on every row of check-in at the airport. Thailand without Buddhism would be such a different place, it's crazy. The ticket agent asked me my seat preference. I said aisle. I got a window and then a middle seat on my flights lol. The food on the BKK-NRT flight was not very good at all. I watched the movie Unknown. It was okay...it passed time.
My layover in Tokyo was less than an hour. I was running to my gate. Then at boarding time--at 5 o'clock--I found out that I was at the wrong gate. Two flights, both going to SFO within 5 minutes of eachother. Wtheck? So, I booked it to my gate, seeing on my way that my flight was in final boarding. There were flight attendants looking for me lol.
On the flight, I was on the very last row. The seat in front of me had no room for my bag, so it was super uncomfortable to squeeze my legs and my bag into the leg room. We had some major turbulence for the first 2 hours. Apparently 160 mph winds? They had the flight attendants stop dinner service and sit down because it was so bad. There was a pretty intense moment when on flight attendant jumped up from his seat and yelled at a lady who was about to get up with her whiney child, "Sit down!! Sit down!! You're gonna kill the kid! It's way to bumpy on here!" Seriously, it was pretty dramatic how it all happened.
I couldn't sleep, so it was a long flight. However, in the last few hours, I stumbled upon a Justin Bieber special. I watched the rest of it, which was over 2 hours. And I liked it. A lot. I didn't realize he was so talented. I'm a bit late on the uptake, I know. But it also disgusted me to see all those teenage girls bawling their eyeballs out and saying, "I love him sooo much!" lol On a more spiritual note, I had a great Spanish PMG study session, reading the 1st lesson and the Christlike Attributes chapter. So good. I love PMG.
Verrry rough landing in SFO. But it's nice and sunny here. I sat outside on the ground (yup) so I could be in the sun. It's weird since it's dry here. I went and bought some lotion because I was dying for some.
Anyway, one more hour til my flight. I'm so ready to be home, to sleep in my bed.
Also, I need a good job ASAP. Not ASAP. More like yesterday. This next bit will be interesting...