I’m here – exhausted – but here.

The flight over was uneventful (which is a good thing).  The only real annoyance was the dude who sat next to me on the first leg of the trip.  He was completely engrossed in his blackberry and was typing on it most of the flight.  So engrossed in fact that he couldn’t even take the time to cover his mouth when he coughed.  Gross.  Thanks buddy – just the way I like to start my trips – with the plague.

The hotel is nice, I’ll share pictures (some time when I am not exhausted) of the two items in the room that tried to kill me and my square bath tub (it’s cute!).

I’m extremely tired right now. It’s an 10.5 hour time difference from back home and me and jet lag don’t get along.  I am trying to make myself stay awake until at least 9 (it’s 8:37) right now.  We have tomorrow off (Happy Veterans Day) so I can sleep in tomorrow (woo hoo!).

Apparently I really like parenthesis (maybe it’s just because I’m so tired?).

One quick story before I crash (in the figurative sense, not literally like you’ll hear in a minute).

The traffic here is insane.  Driving in last night I saw cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, horses, and auto rickshaws (basically the same thing as the tuk-tuks we saw in Bangkok) and pedestrians all “sharing” the road.

The lines on the road are treated as suggestions, head and taillights appear to be optional, and you aren’t cool unless you beep your horn at least once every 40 seconds.  This morning on our way in to work our taxi and another car hit each other.  We weren’t going fast and no one was hurt.  Our driver and the driver of the other car got out of their vehicles, yelled at each other for a while, decided everything was okay, and we went on our way.  Oh, and we got honked at – a lot.

Here’s a picture I found online – but trust me, it’s an accurate representation.  I would take my own picture for you but I can’t work the camera and hold on for dear life at the same time.  What the picture doesn’t show is the roundabouts and people cutting across three lanes of traffic (on a two lane road) to get to them.  It also doesn’t accurately convey the “floor it and then slam on the brakes” mentality of many drivers and exactly how close these vehicles get to each other.  It’s scary.

Those things with the yellow tops are the three-wheeled death traps auto rickshaws and no Dave, we are not riding in one when you get here.

Okay, I’m done for the night.  I’ve had about all the excitement I can handle for one day.

Oh, and in case you don’t want to do the math (10.5 hours is a pain to convert), the time here is currently:

Edited: I first wrote that it was an 11.5 hour time difference. Apparently my math skills failed me though, since it’s really 10.5 hours. I’m blaming it on the jet lag.