I normally wouldn't post this to our travel website. This conversation would usually just be between Tim and myself, most likely over some wine while we cooked dinner tonight. But curiosity has gotten the better of me. So I'm hoping one of the "deep fried tarantula" people can help me out.

On our walk down to the water last night, I noticed something was different in our little town. Houses that sit silent in the fall, winter, and spring months had movement inside them again. And instead of our path to the water being lit only by the light of the moon, the soft glow of lights from front porches showed us the way.

I have recently come to the realization that I am cursed. No matter how hard I try, I just cannot get my Pad Thai to taste like it did from the street carts in Bangkok. For the rest of my life, I will be forced to pay $1,600 in airfare every time I want to eat proper Pad Thai.

I'm looking forward to the sing-songy tones of Thai becoming part of my week again. And of course I'm looking forward to teaching and hopefully helping someone learn English too. But the things I'm looking forward to most are the same things I look forward to while traveling...

It's just after six o'clock in the morning right now, which means that exactly 24 hours from now we'll be receiving safety instructions from a flight attendant as our plane begins to taxi towards a runway. And about six and a half hours after that, we'll be landing in Mexico.