Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The Travel Project

In exactly nine days, I will be sitting at the San Francisco Airport waiting for my extremely long plane ride to Singapore. I'll be making my first adventure into Asia with a two and a half week long trip to Singapore and Thailand.

The journey starts in Singapore where I'll be joining a friend from work who has family over there. Her family has generously offered to let me stay with them so I will be getting a real "insider" look at how life in Singapore really is. Of course, we will take the time to do some touristy things, the nocturnal zoo and orchid nurseries being some of the ones I'm most excited about. There was even some talk of going to a traditional tea house.

After that it's on to Thailand, Bangkok to be exact, where both my friend from Singapore and I will be staying with another friend who now lives in Thailand. We will be staying at her house and enjoying the sights of the capital. I really want to see the Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha, especially since I've been reading a book that takes place right there! Hopefully, we'll also get some elephant riding in since it looks so fun in the pictures :)

After a few days there, it's off to Phuket (an island of Thailand). This will be the most relaxing part of the trip and we're hoping to visit at least one other island, Ko Phi Phi, on a day trip. They might even have monkeys there! I think this is the place my Mom is worried about the most since it was one of the places that got hit hard by the tsunami a few years ago. I told her everything was going to be fine. I will return in one piece.

With six airplane trips total, most of them being short hops except for the 18-19 hour USA to Singapore leg, I will have some time to knit. I had originally debated about bringing a project, but finally decided that I would probably go insane with boredom on the plane if I didn't. So, I chose Elbac. It's a cabled scarf pattern from the Winter 2006 Knitty that I thought would be small enough for travel, yet involved enough to keep me occupied and make the time fly. I'm making it with Nashua Handknits Create Focus Worsted in soft sage. It's my first attempt at cables, but I think it's looking good so far. I've promised myself that I won't work on it anymore until I'm at least at the airport :)

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