Tomorrow morning, I will begin my Asian journey by chasing the sun from before it’s crisp breath moves the clouds across this side of the world. I will be getting a head start on it by setting down in Seattle. It won’t have broken the horizon when I leave Alaska for another four hours. But it should be peaking over the horizon by the time I get to Washington. A few hours later, I will be boarding another plane that will land in the house of the rising sun — or at least the airport of the rising sun which, hopefully, will be shining in its full glory over the Japanese coast so that I can get the bird’s eye view of it. From Tokyo, my final flight will be landing in Bangkok at ll:45 p.m. Alaska time, a quarter-to-eight in the evening to those of you receiving this email and about 5 p.m. the next evening in Thailand. And, when it’s all said and done, I will have left before the sun rose in the west, gone forward in time by way of the Japanese gates and landed on the other side of the world halfway through the following day. Altogether, not a bad way to start my latest journey.
For those of you receiving this email, please reply and confirm that you are receiving me and that you would like to continue receiving these journals throughout my travels in Asia. Otherwise I will assume that you no longer use the email that I have or that you are not interested in receiving anything further.
I may be unavailable for much of this trip, so if I miss the opportunity to tell you so, I wish each of you a very merry Christmas, Happy Hanuka, a happy New Year and a safe and wonderful holiday season. All my best, Cyle Patton O’Donnell