The furthest I’ve traveled is to Bangkok, Thailand. My boyfriend and I went to Thailand in January 2023 for our birthdays. We took an eleven-hour flight from New York City to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Once in Saudi Arabia, we had an eighteen-hour layover.

Instead of staying in the airport for eighteen hours, we explored Riyadh. We went to a vegan café, then to a museum, then checked out one of Saudi Arabia’s tallest buildings, the Al Faisaliah Tower. Once we were done exploring, we checked into a hotel for a few hours to relax and sleep before our flight to Bangkok. The hotel was conveniently near the airport.

The flight from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Bangkok, Thailand was a little over eight hours. When we finally got to Bangkok, we were tired, and hungry, but excited to be there. One of the most exhausting parts of this trip was actually walking through the streets of Bangkok, rolling my large heavy luggage, which had two damaged wheels.

Let me back up a little.

When we went to pick up our luggage at baggage claim, I didn’t realize that two of the wheels were damaged. I noticed it was a little hard to roll, but I was also tired, so I didn’t think much of it. We then entered a taxi to take us to our Airbnb. When we exited the taxi, we realized the driver had dropped us off too soon, and we were about three blocks away from our Airbnb. We discussed with eachother whether we should take another taxi to the Airbnb or walk. The New Yorker in us decided to walk. By the way, where we stayed in Bangkok was very walkable.

Unfortunately, this was when the exhaustion hit. I walked a couple of steps and realized my luggage was too heavy for me to move. So my boyfriend decided he would roll it for me. While he rolled it I looked at how the wheels were moving and noticed that the two back wheels were damaged and barely rolling. So he basically had to drag it. He also had his own large luggage. So I took his luggage and it was definitely not a fun walk to the Airbnb. It was supposed to take about seven minutes to get there, but it took us over twenty.