Getting There: A Very Busy Week

Monday, 6:00 AM. Begin investigating airline flights, visa requirements, immunizations, compose a letter of resignation.
8:00 AM: call my boss and manager, leave messages that it's important to talk with them TODAY, email letter of resignation.
Begin calling US Passport agency to arrange for an in-person appointment for a one-day passport renewal. Reminding myself that I could always change it later, I made the appointment for Friday, July 2nd, 800 AM. Incidentally, it took three minutes on the phone, forty-eight minutes on hold.
9:30: the Thai Consulate in LA picked up after one generation of a phone tree. For a visa, I would need a background check, official proof of employment, a background check, passport pictures, and a passport good for six months (mine's due to expire in September). Dropoff hours are from 9-11:00 AM, and pickup is the next day between 10:00 and 12:00. I could express mail a package, but that would be 10 days at best.
11:00 Call boss and manager, leave messages
Noon: As it stands, I can, if all the marbles fall in the appropriate spots, fly to LA one night, take care of my passport all the following day—it's a daylong project—my Thai visa the second and third mornings, then either fly home or fly out from LA. Flying out from LA would mean packing all my new life that much earlier, but would get me in-country that much sooner.
And as far as flights go, those leaving SFO depart in the early afternoon and arrive in Bangkok late at night, and flights from LAX leave late at night and arrive early in the morning two days hence. From Bangkok, a commuter plane leaves for Nakhon Si Thammarat at 7:00 AM and 4:00 PM.
Ideally, I'd arrive early morning, make the connection, and have a bit to acclimate to my new digs—best world would be arriving Thursday or Friday so I could have a business day and a weekend before stepping into the classroom. But the morning arrivals are scheduled to land at 6:30, so that would mean spending the jetlagged day in Bangkok before arriving late at NST. Better to arrive late at night, all blasted out, and fly early in the morning to give more time on the ground at what will be home.
So that's that—I'll fly out on a Wednesday, arrive on Friday morning, and hit the classroom on Monday. Now I need to find out whether the school wants me ASAP or after a visa run; to get a visa will essentially postpone the trip a week, which would have me on the ground in late July, after the latest-possible day at work, July 12. And I need to know my last day at work, so I know when I can get airline tickets rolling.
2:00: Call boss and manager, leave messages.
Drive 75 minutes to drop off information at the Sheriff for a county background check(sufficient for visa requirements).
4:00: Call boss and manager, leave messages. Reach a supervisor on his cell phone: “Congratulations, that's fantastic for you. We will miss you but wish you all the best. Make sure you submit a letter of resignation, and our manager will set you up with an exit interview.

Tuesday, June 29:
6:00 AM: The school would prefer to get me in-country ASAP, so depending on my last day, I'll be leaving the 7th or 14th.
Before leaving, I'll need Hepatitis A and B, Typhoid, and Japanese Encephalitis vaccines. I'll need professional attire to teach in a semi-formal atmosphere within a culture that values teachers and expects them to dress accordingly. This wouldn't be a problem, except that my entire professional wardrobe is geared toward wool and silk—nice, thick, warm, insulation against arctic winds blown down from Canada during eight-month winters. Tropics? Shorts? Sure, I have a pair. I also have the swim trunks I bought a decade ago and have used maybe twice.
Tripadvisor.com turns out to be the cheapest booking agent for short-notice flights, which means I could offset the cost by selling only my left leg on the black market. And there are travel clinics two hours in either direction—one a private guy with photos of an aging anthro-prof sort with a wild beard and thick, round, horn-rimmed glasses (presumably himself) sitting among indigenous folks (presumably to bolster his ethos, not his patient base), and the other a suburban sub-branch of an urban medical group but only open a couple hours a week by advance appointment.
I called Dr. Livingstone and heard an answering machine voice somewhat like a Weird Al take on a stoner muppet asking me to very slowly, clearly, carefully, and slowly state the date, time, nature of my call, and my name and very carefully my number so he could call me back at his convenience.
I had visions of the skinny guy with the salt and pepper fro of hair and beard wearing the heaftiest loincloth around the campfire having a load of dust blown up his nose by a gyrating shaman, and then returning one too many times, and I hung up. Cowardly? Maybe. But do you want this guy shooting you up with typhoid, encephalitis, and whatever else he deems appropriate (or, worse, doses unknowingly)?
I called my boss and manager at 8:00 and again at 11:00. Please call. Important.
The recruiter in Thailand told me to bring good shoes because the Thai equivalent don't hold up, and sheets, because cotton sheets are prohibitively expensive. I had a mandatory work meeting at 2:30, but afterward, I'd drive down to the city for some shopping—running shoes, shorts, tee shirts, packing goodies.
Would I be able to get fuel for my isobutane stove? How much would it cost to get a synthetic equivalent of my down sleeping bag made with feathers that exceed the highest rating systems in the world? Would it even be worth bringing my backpacking gear?
I started researching detailed flight plans and decided on one that left SFO on Wednesday and arrived in NST on Friday morning. About the time I was wrapping up, the phone rang and the oddly doper Muppet voice said, “This is Dr. Tribal, returning the call I missed. How can I help you?”
“I'm going to be living in Southern Thailand for the next fourteen-plus months. What do I need?”
“When do you leave?”
“Next Wednesday.”
“Oh dear. You see, the tet-a-nus vac-cine is a long, drawn-out process. First you must get a prescription from someone like me, someone who has a medical background, someone who is a doctor. Then you must fill the prescription, and not many places—pharmacies—have it. Then you must bring a cooler and icepack because the vac-cine is very sensitive to heat. And then you must take doses for a week becore you come back to see me. But you, you will be traveling in a week. Best to find someone up there who will call the prescription in so you can begin taking it tomorrow. Best to call in an appointment in your area. Do you know of any doc-tor who might help you? If not, I will help, but it will be for a small fee. I cannot drive up, though, because I made a house call on Sunday and cannot return so soon—I have... business here.”
I was thoroughly creeped out and saying anything to make him stop talking. To no effect whatsoever.
He went on about housecalls he'd made, about drugs and vaccines and what happens to those who scrimp (horrible illnesses that make death by poisioning look fast and painless), about places he'd been. All fascinating, but not getting me closer to innoculation or Thailand. Eventually, I jammed in a sideways sentence--”very thank you good bye!”
I called the local medical group, who agreed to see me tomorrow, Wednesday, and get me vaccinated, although they didn't have the typhoid vaccine.
“Please have a doctor call me ASAP, because I understand that it's a week-long series of oral dosages that are hard to find. If I can get a prescription today, I can get the drugs ordered from a pharmacy and be vaccinated by departure.”

As I headed for work on what should've been—what had been for the first six months—an unprecedented second day off. Unfortunately, it was not a gracious nod to the amount of time and energy I'd been investing, but a simple fact of running a foreclosed business: non-critical personnel were cut, so the full-time staff necessary to run a busy restaurant was working half-time when lucky. So the entire staff was expected to clock in for an hour-long ass-chewing followed by, “Questions?”
But only six of us showed up, and the gluteal gnawing lasted just over two hours. And instead of, “Questions? Comments? Concerns?” we got, “Here's some corked wine, try a sip—BE SURE TO SPIT UNDER PENALTY OF GOD—and clock out.”
Afterward, I stood in front of my manager until she put away enough of her presentation to notice me. She's just over twenty, spunky, and was cute enough to be dubbed General Manager of a restaurant in a global luxury hotel chain. It's not that she had any managerial skills or experience, restaurant experience, knew the food service industry from the back, or had great people skills, she was the sort of bubbly cute the executive manager found appealing, so she got the job.
When she looked up and saw me, she said, “Oh, yeah, I saw that you called and sent an email. What was that about?”
At least the treatment I received stayed consistent through my giving notice. She did consent to let me go after Sunday the 4th, so that meant flying out on Wednesday the 7th. Time to start rolling.

Wednesday, June 30, 5:00 AM
Revelation: Airline miles. Book with miles and the out of pocket is taken care of. Duh.
And it becomes real: I'm booked from SFO to BKK on Wednesday, July 7, a week in advance, departing at 13:40, arriving at 23:10 on July 8th, laying over until 7:00 July 9th and flying to NST via a commuter plane. Wow. Gulp.
9:00 AM: a doctor had called just before closing to tell me that there wasn't anything to do but show up and figure out the vaccinations at my appointment, so I started calling pharmacies and health clinics. Nobody had the vaccine until I reached a hospital two hours away—most things are at least two hours away, more during peak travel times like July 4th—where I could get vaccinated for anything I needed, and they could get me in before work if I could get down there in time.

A lady with thinning gray hair and a pleasantly soft paunch sat me down in a remarkably non-sterile office.
“Now, where are you going?”
“Thailand, for fourteen months.”
“Oh, wow, doing what?”
“Teaching English and music to primary school kids.”
“Wonderful! I always wanted to do something like that.”
It was an increasingly familiar script that never got old or wearisome.
“And what is your history of vaccinations?”
“I know I've had some, but it's been a while. Hit me with what you've got.”
Bad, bad, move.
“Okay, wait right here and I'll be back in a jiffy.”
Eight minutes later, she came back holding a tray that should've been full of cookies the way she was humming. No such luck, though: lots and lots of needles.
The good news was that she had an injectable typhoid shot, so everything would be taken care of. The bad news was that she spent the next fifteen minutes stabbing needles into my arms and telling me to keep rubbing and using them because this shot tends to hurt the next day.
And once I was swimming with a wretched cocktail of non-infectious diseases and had numb clubs for arms, I was told that they didn't work with insurance companies so I would have to pay up front for more than four digits of diseases.
At least I saved on the airline tickets, right?

When I showed up to work, my manager looked surprised.
“What are you doing here?”
“I'm on the schedule. Should I have been called off?”
“Yeah, why don't you go home. You're probably pretty busy, right?”
Should I have hoped for a change in conduct?

Thursday, July 1
First stop was the gastroenterologist, whose extensive and invasive tests had yet to determine how I could eat like a horse and still winnow down to a skeletal forty pounds underweight. He still had nothing, but could book me for an endoscopy the day before my departure, and it turned out that they had missed one of the most fundamental tests in the very first round. Oops.
So an endoscopy the day before flying out, great. Just what I was hoping for: a drugged-up, fasted-out hospital visit on my last day in America.

Three hours later, I was back at the Sheriff. $50 for an Acrobat-caliber form saying that I have a clean arrest record in El Dorado County. Whee.
And three hour after that, I was back at work with my bags packed: I would drive down closer to the passport office for an 8:00 appointment. Friday night, I would meet with my grandfather for a goodbye dinner, and I would be at work at 7:00 Saturday.
Again, whee.

Friday, July 2nd
I drug my bleary self through pre-dawn darkness to make it to the Passport Agency on time. Work ran late so I didn't get in until just after midnight, and I loaded up on coffee before falling unconscious. I was expecting delays or diversions, so I planned an extra hour-plus into the drive. Good thing, too.
It went smoothly until the Bay Bridge, which is cash or FasTrack only.
I work part-time at a corporate restaurant in the mountains; how in the world would I honestly come by either cash or a FasTrak?
I took the last possible turnoff, hoping to find a place to activate my new ATM card and get some cash.
Heh.
I should mention that as a mountain kid, everything from Vallejo to the Pacific, anyplace with perpetual fog and chilly summers but temperate springs, is San Francisco. East Bay—technically Oakland, I think—is not a very touristy area, at least not around the shipping yards. And a Wells Fargo ATM? Good luck.
Eventually, I found a Safeway where I bought seaweed snacks and a Diet Pepsi so I could get cash back after calling to activate my debit card. Thank God for technology when it works, right?
Then I had to get back to I-80 and the Bay Bridge.
First I asked at Safeway, but the onramp to which I was directed was for Sacramento—wrong way. So I tried to find an onramp going the other way. Dee-you-emm DUM!
Mountain kids like me have no business whatsoever trying to find their ways through urban jungles.
Once I hit North Berkeley, I stopped to ask for directions, and the poor Bengali woman looked even more shellshocked than I felt after trying to explain how to get to I-80. I stopped again in Concord and two locals got in an argument about the best shortcut, because of course nobody in their right mind would take the long way all the way down to I-80. By the time I made it to 80, I crawled across the Bay Bridge in a snarl of traffic and broke most posted and implicit traffic laws I came across while trying to get to the US Passport Authority.
I was almost on time until I hit a metal detector and X-ray checkpoint. I'd been through a number of airline checkpoints, so I wasn't worried, but the guy got pretty anxious about my bag. Had me pull it out, rifle through it, and said he saw a pocket knife. I couldn't imagine getting through TSA that many times with a knife, but there it was: the same knife I had to shave with when I showed up unshaven on my second day of work.
“Come back when you've made that disappear,” the guy said.
But a few minutes late seemed minor when I drew number 84 and the “Now Serving” sign showed 32.
So I called my bank to let them know I'd have transactions from Thailand, my credit card company for the same, my student loan agents to beg for deferment, the car insurance company to re-file as a parked vehicle, and still had time to spare. Then, once I was up, it took about 85 seconds to drop off the form, pay the $200, and receive orders to return around 3:30 to show my receipt and pick up a new passport at will-call. Until then, I could walk laps around the city.

The worst part of the day was trying to fight out of San Francisco on the Friday before July 4th. It was a parking lot for five hours and a hundred miles. And just as I was getting all worked up about the amount of traffic and people zooming all over which way and what have you, I thought, “Wait, I'm going to Thailand, where there are ten times as many people and five times as many vehicles in half the space, and over there not only do they drive on the wrong side of the road, they have elephants!” That mindset helped me tolerate the rest of the day with grace.
That and getting to laugh—yes, laugh—at my boss when I got a call at 16:00 saying, “You need to come in because we got surprised.”
“Really? You gave me Friday of the 4th of July weekend off because you didn't think it would be busy? Huh, imagine. Unfortunately, I'm in San Francisco at the Passport Authority and couldn't be there by 8:00 even if I didn't have other commitments.”

Saturday, July 3
Once again, rolled in at midnight and out before six.
Breakfast was surprisingly mellow. After a fantastically busy winter season, the hotel had set prices at peak winter rates: $650 per room, per night, minimum of three nights. Easy sell during the ski season; the Wednesday before the Fourth, they went, “Hmm, we're only at 26% occupancy, maybe we should drop rates.” By Saturday morning, we were up to 30%.
It was the worst sort of shift: six-plus hours of draining make-work, pretending to be engaged and doing something to justify your draw on the payroll.
By the time I got home, I felt like a zombie.
I looked at the jumble of clean clothes piled on my bed, at the jumble of closet to be sorted, at the pile of dirty clothes to be washed, and drug a lawn chair to a sunny spot on the deck where I sat with a beer until it was time to cook dinner. I reshuffled some of the clothes, trying to decide what I might need to live in Thailand for a year, and decided it was time to drink another beer and watch the sun go down.

Sunday, July 4
It was to be a grand barbecue gala—a family-style all-you-can-eat affair with jalapeno cornbread, cheesy biscuits, and plates loaded with chicken, tritip, pork ribs, cole slaw, potato salad, and Old Bay fries, followed by dishes of bread pudding. All the iced or sweet tea you want, out the door for $55 plus booze and a tip.
I was sent home at noon without having tried anything, seen anything, or done much except put plates in warmers so the food an entire kitchen worth of cooks spent the night preparing had the best chance possible to be hot and appetizing when it reached the table. I had run some food—breakfast that was kept ready in case someone wanted to order a-la-carte.
It was all that sold.

So Sunday was for packing. Typically, I would be packed a week or two ahead and winnow down to the minimum, practicing the most efficient bag loading possible, squeezing as much space from the weight as I possibly could.
Two weeks from the time I learned I would be flying to Thailand, I would be teaching a classroom of Thai students.
So. Forget the winnowing. Just cut the crap from the get-go. Easy.

Monday, July 5
There wasn't much repacking. Nothing excessive in the tuba case: three nice shirts, socks and underwear.
Met my dad and stepmom for a sendoff, sent my car to live with them where it wouldn't be parked under pine trees and flocks of birdies.
And that was that. Made a final selection of books, packed my toothbrush, and was ready to say goodbye.

Tuesday, July 6
It was the endoscopy day, so the morning and early afternoon were easily occupied. Afterward, Mom drove me straight home; one more review of packing, and we were off.
A final Wal-Mart run, a sendoff dinner at a steakhouse, and it was somehow Wednesday, departure day.