The Journey...

As expected, the trip was LONG. A few stats to put things into perspective:

-Door to door total travel time: 42 hours

-Left Manhattan Tuesday, June 1, 8am EST, arrived in Bogor Thursday, June 3, 2pm local time (we're +11 from East Coast, check it at the top here)

-It's hot here.

In order of the flight paths:

JFK to Tokyo: 13 hours. Surprisingly, this leg of the trip went quickly. Dan sits down in his cozy window seat (we've discussed flight seating arrangments for at least 6 weeks prior to this) only to find that the former passenger left a pleasant puke surprise in the seat. They promptly move him and his neighor, a lovely nameless fellow who Dan fell in love with because of their shared joy for all things Bahston. Dude sniffed me out as a Yankee fan almost instanteously. He turned out to be OK in my book because he ran in college with Bill Rodgers. Also they shared their free "sorry about the puke" wine with me, so I'm not complaining. Jess zonked out for 12/13 hours, I kept busy with some preparatory work reading and learning to count to ten in Indonesian. A few SCREAMING babies on this flight... You better have a damn good reason for flying an infant from New York to Japan. My calf compression sleeves (THANK YOU ZENSAH!!!) yet again demonstrate their versatility, saving my legs from the pain of a long flight.

Tokyo airport 4 hour layover: Super clean and organized but this is no surprise. This is a shot of their musical toilets, something I can't imagine you would ever see in the US. Sushi was nowhere to be found.. weird. Time goes quickly and we board for Singapore.

Tokyo to Singapore: 7 more hours. By this point I've been awake close to 24 hours and manage to be in and out of consiousness the entire flight. Good thing, somehow we ended up with middle seats. NOT ok on a trip like this... I attempt to watch Alice in Wonderland and Invictus, but fell asleep not more than two minutes into each.

Singapore: THANK YOU TO PATRICK MAHER (pictured here, with Dan, in his awesome condo) for entertaining us to pass the time. Having a familiar face and leaving the airport for about 12 hours was essential in surviving our marathon journey.

Singapore is an interesting place. I'm not sure there are many places in the world where you can find right smack in the middle of a shopping mall a spot that has karaoke and hoards of women dancing on the bar. Welcome to Asia. We enjoy a little of the nightlife followed by a delicious hotel breakfast buffet, play on Pat's jungle gym (see below), and promptly make our way back to airport just in time for our last flight.. at which point both Jess and I are charged over-weight fees for our two bags. Thank you Air Asia, the Ryan Air of this part of the universe.

Singapore to Jakarta: 1.5 hours, I have an entire row to myself, delightful.

Drive to Bogor: 60-90 minutes. I fell asleep. So exhausted. Jakarta is hot. Sadly my first impression of the city is of the miles and miles of informal housing settlements. All I can think of is the poor construction sitting on a dangerous fault line.. You can also see the heat/pollution/humidity pouring out of the ground.

Although upon arrival we hoped for a nap, that was not the case.. we end up running around all afternoon taking care of our rooms, setting up internet and cell phones, and getting ready to start work the next day.