May 14-15: ASIA

Traveling to Asia- for the first time ever!

Today I traveled to another new continent: Asia! Compared to last year, I was not as nervous and I felt more confident about leaving the United States by myself. My first flight took me from Pittsburgh to a layover in Boston. Boarding this flight was extremely nerve-wracking, but I was excited to land in Tokyo 14 hours later. This was my final layover before boarding my flight to Bangkok, Thailand. In this airport, all the signs were in Japanese with a couple English signs; thus, making it even more difficult than it already was for me to figure out my way around. After another 7 hours, I was finally in Bangkok! I arrived around midnight so I decided to just stay in an airport hotel and check-in to my hostel the next day. At first, Thailand was a huge culture shock for me, but this was a feeling I was used to due to traveling to Senegal, Africa, the year prior. 

      Thailand is more conservative than the United States and have different forms of greetings than we are accustomed to. Once arriving to the hotel, the receptionist greeted me with a bow. I knew before arriving that people used bows as a sign of respect and greeting; however, I was in such shock and confusion I had no idea what to do. After this mistake, I quickly learned to always bow back and quickly got comfortable with it. After a long day of traveling around the globe, I slept and did not experience horrible jet lag.

On  my Japan Airlines flight