Thailand: I was thinking more about how to keep the insides of my stomach where they belonged -- on the inside -- and less about the fact that this would be the last uncomfortable border crossing before I finished up my trip. In several guidebooks and from most people you talk to in Cambodia you'll hear that the temples of Angkor Wat are the country's pride and national jewel. Their roads, on the other hand, are their national disgrace. Monsoons and poor engineering have left craters the size of tanks pocking even the best roads. I had laughed in the central area of Laos a month and a half earlier when it took over eight hours to drive just under 150 miles. This time I could only swallow and prepare myself for the five hour trip across the 77 miles to the Cambodian/Thai border town of Poipet.

"This road is awesome!" I yelled to Bill in the front of the cab. We had bought tickets to ride up front with the driver, nearly a dozen others clung to the bed of the truck, loaded up with bags of rice and other goods to trade over the border. I had been getting more and more annoyed with the ride the bumpier and slower it got. I knocked from one side of the cab to the other, hitting my head on the window every few minutes each time the driver hit a pot hole to change the high pitched Cambodian music in the tape deck. At which point I remembered that in a few days I would drive to the airport and slide into a business-class seat for my trip home. The ride became that much more enjoyable from there on out.

The sunlight streamed through the cotton ball-ed sky and red dust kicked up from the passing semis, together they covered the ragged Cambodian countryside in a way that was so ugly it appeared beautiful. Wild grasses poked up out of abandoned rice paddies -- mines deterring anyone from stepping too near. Men and women with lost appendages mixed 50/50 with the rest of the road-side workers moving dirt and goods across the land. Just a few years ago this stretch of road was impassable, due much to the quality of the road as to the Khmer Rouge rebels nestled beside it. Poppet, an ugly frontier town, was shelled daily.

Stepping out of Cambodia was like coming inside to cool air-con from a sweltering booby-trapped sauna. The clouds lifted but the temperature dropped. The roads became, well, roads again, flat and straight. And a convenience store 200m from the welcome gate sold Gatorade. The experience was rather bitter-sweet. But I know that the conveniences here are nothing compared to those of the States, where bitter-sweet will too soon turn sickly. Not that I'll complain mind you, but I do find the comparisons fascinating. Here, where every drink has to be tooth-rot sweet, a good latte is near impossible to find, but once discovered is savored that much more. To America, where Starbucks lolls away on every street corner, and where you have to ask for sugar in your beverage; savoring, perhaps, a free-moving freeway as you sip on your coffee.

Hawaii, USA: T.S. Eliot said, "We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time." Whether Eliot was talking about Kihei, Maui i'm none too sure. But nearly one year ago today I began my exploring and have, after living out of a small (others would argue large) backpack, returned to the place I started. I'm not going so far as to say that I have finished exploring, I'm not even going to say that I now know this place as if I've seen it for the first time. In fact, the only reason I type this quote here is because I'm returned and it says a bit about that. Guess that pretty much sums up my feelings upon landing -- jet lag. Yes, still fuzzy from my flight across the water so I'm trying to justify not making any more sense than I usually do here in my Ramblings.

I left out of Bangkok at 6am on the 24th. Six hours to Tokyo, sleeping barely over an hour due to nerves and the desire to sleep on my next leg, Japan to Hawaii. In Tokyo I had a long layover to lounge about in two of the three business-class lounges. I had the great fortune to get upgraded to business-class by my Web guru and later months travel partner Bill. Bill left me in Tokyo and continued on back to Seattle. I had over five hours of layover there and had, since leaving the big man in black and purple, gone for a walk through the miserable excuse for an international airport, nothing but a few duty-free shops with electronic gadgets and make-up. So I left and walked back to where my gate is, 44, and hopped into the other business-class lounge. Then I heard on the intercom that my flight had moved gates -- now I was leaving out of gate 20 on the other side of the airport, conveniently located next to the third and last business-class lounge. Seeing the different lounges was, at least, a good way to pass the time while in an airport. Unfortunately, I thought, if the third is in line with the others I'm not in for too much of a surprise. The same tune with different singers, kind of like all this wonderful Christmas music that was being pumped into the lounges and terminals. Lovely.

I was not looking forward to the flight, even though it was business-class. (A fiddle rendition of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer started blaring out of the speakers. May need to finish beer and proceed to next to cope with the next few hours, I thought while slumped over a lounge chair staring out the window at the cold Japanese day.) I wasn't sure how long the next particular leg was. The dateline really screws me up. I left at 7:30pm and arrived into Honolulu at 6:50am. Just like my stellar spelling ability, niether can I do basic mathematics. If this machine didn't have spell-check whoever read this would need a translator, one who's fluent in Reed-Write. (Ha-ha ha. Where's my beer?) So just excuse me for a second and I'll go flip over to my Date&Time program on this computer. If it's 4:08pm in Tokyo, the 24th of December, and it's 9:08pm in Honolulu, the 23rd of December, than it means Japan is 14 hours ahead of Hawaii.

If your plane leaves Japan at 7:30pm, Dec 24th, going east and arrives in Hawaii at 6:50am, Dec 24th, how long have you been flying? Assuming you keep drinking the way you are, hell, it could take you less than a few minutes. Beers aside however, it was nearly a six and a half-hour journey. Not too bad (my math and the length of the flight). It flu right by.

So what do I have to say about this "home coming"? It's been a year since I left, one year since I've been in American society. Lots have happened in this year. I could list off all the intriguing experiences but they would, no doubt, display my adeptness for surviving in the harsh place that is the Third World, high-lighting my genius in difficult circumstances and showing my special talents of entertainment in times of boredom and prolonged quiet. I do not wish to be a braggart so I will not flaunt these experiences here (see: soon to be published book I write describing in detail how I just about killed myself in every country I visited). I am looking forward to going home. The comfort will be nice, as will the wardrobe choice, but the ease of it will be overwhelming. I've gotten used to the exotic and have romanticized its tribulations (like the intestinal parasites, absolutely marvelous). Now I will have to go back to creating my own disasters in order to keep my life interesting. Like I've said before, my imagination is a bit on the large side, when there's nothing like bombs and foreign language to keep it at bay my mind makes up small worlds to take reality's place. (This all may be a great recipe for the writing of my book. I'll be able to be imaginative about real unbelievable experiences, hopefully making them that much more interesting. We'll see.)

So after arriving into Maui at 8am, I came back to the little place my family and I stay, showered, and fell asleep only to be woken up at 5pm for Christmas Eve activities. That night I rolled off to bed at midnight and rolled out of bed at 3:30am; I've been mumbling like an idiot all day. Now with a belly full of turkey and potatoes, a warm glass of milk, I'm trying to bribe my system into a long night's rest.

I wanted to say thank you to all of you who've kept up with me through the months, voiced or unvoiced. It was an experience, the beginning of many more to come.