The Arrival

Eleven straight hours in a plane is, as it turns out, not all that fun. Watching Into the Wild and No Country for Old Men was a good, somewhat poignant double feature, though the mono headphones (headphone?) made watching them more of a labor of love than a relaxing time killer.

Laid eyes on Rainier, the Olympic Peninsula, the mountains and coastlines surrounding Anchorage, some of Russia that really beckoned for a fishing rod...

and not much of China, for a disconcerting reason; peep the air quality when landing in Beijing:

Rainbow Power in Beijing

I didn't peel off many photos in the airport because 1: It's an airport, even if those tend to have some wild architecture, and 2: there was a LOT of running around to do, even with 3 hours and no baggage check to handle, most everyone there waited through several lines and got the hassle about Visas and such.

A young Russian traveler befriended me in about 60 seconds in the gate awaiting our shuttle to the plane to Bangkok, asked me to watch his stuff, jetted off to the second floor and rematerialized in a matter of moments, holding two cans of Tsingtao. That was the most delicious can of beer I have put back in a while. I was unaware of these Chinese pilsner-brewing powers. As for the flight, my brain said NOPE and I slept right through the in flight meal and everything, but it was dark by this time so I wasn't exactly missing anything. I awoke in time to see the cabin lights drop and the vast blanket of metropolitan glow that is Bangkok revealed itself to me through my third of three window seats. Yeah, three legs on the flight, three window seats. I guess they knew I was coming.