Lordy. What time zone is this? As far as I can figure out, my body is 14 hours behind my surroundings, and my brain, which has always lagged behind, has yet to catch up. The fact that I’m functioning enough to be able to type this is a miracle. I should be asleep. I wish I were.

But I’m in Bangkok, laying over for the night in a fine hotel adjacent to the airport here. It was either that or lay over for about 9 hours in the airport and then arrive in Kathmandu at midnight after 46 hours of continuous travel. I might have chosen that when I was younger (and more penurious), but these days I tend to err on the side of comfort. For all the good it’s done me. Perhaps it will all make sense tomorrow.

Of course, my brain will still think it’s today. But don’t ask which today. I managed to lose a day somewhere over the Pacific. I think it’s Thursday. But don’t hold me to that.

As long flights go, this one wasn’t too bad. I had a few hours to kill in San Francisco, so I managed to have a fine dinner (with couple of his legendary gin and tonics and my fair share of a bottle of wine) at my friend Bruce’s house before launching across the Pacific. The seat assignment gods were merciful, and blessed me with an emergency exit row all to myself, which meant that I could extend my legs to their fully locked position. And I actually caught about 20 winks before we touched down in Taipei at dawn.

There I tried to stay awake until my next flight, ably assisted by the hard plastic seats in the transit lounge. And after a relatively short scoot across the South China Sea, I find myself, well, all but my brain, in Bangkok.

Sorry, no travel horror stories yet.

Oh, and my bags made it here too! I’m a happy guy.

There’s a business center here on the bottom floor, and I’m going to try to copy this file from my little handheld computer to whatever it is they have down there. And if you get this message some time before I arrive in Kathmandu, you can assume I will have been successful.

Then I’m going to come back up here and stare at the ceiling all night long because my brain will be insisting that it’s time to get up.

And this is the sort of thing is that I do for fun!