The summer months are upon us and so are the kids who have been released from their yeshiva confinements. One way to solve this issue would be to ship them away quickly to camp. However, adding the camp fees to the tuition we are already coughing up during the year would be quite damaging to my health, both financial and otherwise.
There were a couple of solutions left: to sell my kidney – nay I may need it later, liver – need it for l’chaims, heart/brain – nothing of value Mrs. Shwarmabob reflects.
“Let’s hit the road, let’s broaden the horizons, let’s bound as a Mishpacha... it will be fun!” – I say. Mrs. Shwarmabob rolls her eyes, so are some of the kinderlach. When I inform Shwarmabob Jr. that he has been designated as the porter of the trip, he is not too enthused. It will help his resume when applying for a Sherpa position in Nepal if his other plans don’t work out! He is still not convinced.
The next step was deciding where to go. I'll spare the details of this discussion but let's just reveal that we agreed on 3 points:
let's not go too far (i.e. Indonesia is out) because our hindquarters will hurt;
let's not go to a place where it's boiling hot because we still remember Japan of last summer
and some wanted to avoid Muslim countries.
I had a few more things to consider such as routing rules, expenses and avoiding the monsoon. It seems that yeshivas don't take the monsoon seasons into consideration when determining when to have vacation. A grave oversight in my opinion.
I set my sights on Vietnam and Cambodia and started to plan our trip. I was pretty annoyed that we would all need visas and that would add up to a decent sum. There was another booboo too: namely that yours truly had the good fortune to travel extensively in Indochina in his younger years. No, it was not thanks to President Johnson's sparkling idea of familiarizing our youth with that part of the world, I am not that old. It was thanks to courier flights which sadly don’t exist anymore. (Is my United routing coming to an end too??) Anywhere we would be going I have been already. Nu nisht geferlach – I will survive.
However, one day Shwarmabob Jr. had a particularly bad case of dirty laundry volcano in his room that he didn’t clean up, or perhaps he got on Mrs. Shwarmabob nerves in some other way but my best half storms in and tells me that heck with Angkor Wat and all, let’s change plans let’s go to Malaysia/Thailand instead. All previous restrictions about distance, weather, and religion fall on the wayside. How exactly is this a punishment for a teen – don’t ask! don’t look for logic! – but I pounced on the idea – no problem it will be arranged.
And so it was.
320000 United points and about $630 taxed later I had the 4 tickets.
EWR – LHR on United so we can use Pre-TSA.
LHR – BKK - KUL on Thai Airways
CNX- BKK-MUC on Thai Airways
MUC – Mystery City on Lufthansa
Mystery City – MUC - EWR on Lufthansa
The TR mainly takes place between Kuala Lumpur and Chiang Mai.
When I was buying the ticket, United thoughtfully gave me the option to purchase the tickets for cash instead of points. The price tag was about $34.000. When I told this to my dad, he said “Nu and you declined the offer.”
Dad, how did you know?
