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I wish I could have captured some fittingly poetic image to conclude this phototour, but I ran out of memory: with this last photograph, I'd used basically all of the 750 MB I'd brought on the trip.  

I arrived back at LAX at about 7 PM on Friday, 7 January 2005, a day after the start of Winter Quarter 2005 and with hundreds of unanswered emails to attend to.  It is a little strange to shift gears so quickly, but then again, it's not every day when you travel 8,500 miles in one Friday.

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Ten days is insufficient time to truly experience any new country, let alone a continent you haven't visited since infancy.  However, I tried to see as much as I could during my short trip; I was aided to an innumerable degree by Avishek, who's proven to be a friend you can count on, no matter what crazy things are going on in the world.

Travel opens your eyes to new worlds.  Going in, I was told that my perspective would change with a visit to a developing country; little did I expect that I would be visiting a nation in the midst of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.  It was ironic to be receiving free bottles of water at the gas station when, not 500 miles away, untold thousands of fractured families were homeless and without fresh food or water.  The disparities we see in the United States are even more striking in Thailand, where a multibillionaire prime minister can refuse to donate even a penny to tsunami relief in his own country and yet simultaneously be named the Thai Man of the Year.  These disparities are not limited to political and economic power; they are evident in the daily lives of impoverished Thai, who scrape by trying to make a living while highrises and megamalls sprout up around them.

Thailand has opened my eyes even wider to the great need in this world for positive social change.  For the first time in my life, I'm seriously contemplating and researching opportunities to work abroad.  Looking back, I am dumbfounded by the Stanford sophomore who refused to major in International Relations because of its Study Abroad requirement.   Today, that looks like the opportunity of a lifetime.  Better late, I suppose, than never.

It's funny what ten days can do.  Going forward, I am sure my experience in Thailand, however brief, will inform my every decision, my every perception as I continue with life in in the States.  While there's no way I can impart every bit of my experience over this digital — or any — medium, I hope this travelogue has provided a glimpse into life 8,500 miles from home.

On 7 January 2005, it was 92°F in Bangkok.