“Let’s go to Bangkok?”
“Ok, fuck it! LET’S GO TO BANGKOK,” and so we went to Bangkok.

Since day one in Thailand it’s been a mad rush. Hit the ground. Start looking for jobs. Start looking for apartments. Figure out how to use the transit system. Stock up on necessary supplies. Double check your account balance. Realize that your checking total only has four digits and two of them are decimals. Reconfigure the financial strategy. Start eating from street carts…exclusively.

We got chewed up and spit out of Bangkok with the quickness. Bangkok stuck it too us hard, gave us five dollars for a ten dollar cab ride home, and never had the courtesy to call back. The city itself was too much. Too much for our situation. Perhaps too much in general. Simply put, we weren’t adequately prepared for the BKK hustle.

To top the stress incurred by searching for work and housing, almost everyone in our crew had been faced with extreme financial crisis’s. As a group we were to the point financially where paying for an apartment was entirely impossible. After a late check out we sat down stairs in the hostel lobby with packed bags and nowhere to go. Ok, so what now? We entertained ridiculous options like vagabonding on the beaches of southern Thailand, banding to together to start our own food cart, or leaving the country entirely to go some place where the dollar goes a bit farther. By the end of the day, when everything was said and done, we were rushing to the BKK train station trying make the 7:35 train.

Could we have found a way to make it in the streets of Bangkok? Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s neither here nor there now. We’re already 10 hours away, sipping on 30 cent coconut smoothies in the shadow of Doi Inthanon, Chiang Mai’s highest mountain. Maybe this is where we should have been all along…

Courts Getting Cozy on TrenItalia

Aeroflot! The official airline of Jet Set Zero and the Russian Federation!

When Rob arrives he’ll have a full 3 hours to relax in our hostel room until we’ve got to gather up our bags and move locations again. Apparently the place, which has been all but abandoned this weekend, has suddenly filled all of its available rooms for Monday night.  Strangely Hostel World claims it’s got availability in every type of room, so maybe we just smell funny… I’m not sure. On the plus side, we’re in the heart of Sultanahmet only a block away from the Blue Mosque so at least if we end up sleeping on the streets it’s a fantastic view!

With finances reaching the critical disaster zone Matt must forgo his spot in the guesthouse and find a home on the streets of Tokyo to save money.

Okay.  So, it has been a while.  More than three weeks, to be precise, which is exactly two weeks longer than it should have been since this episode was released.  A lot happened this month, from obvious hardware failures, to marauding ex-girlfriends, to rheumatoid arthritis, to hilariously weak immune systems, but the simple fact of the matter is that once upon a time none of this ever would have phased me.

In college I was known for my legen-(wait for it)-dary brute strength work ethic (which didn’t always result in creative successes, mind you), and through most of Season 1 I was operating on a moderated version of that same sleep:work ratio.  Either I’m getting old, the full New England winter (my first in almost a decade) was too harsh, or I’m experiencing a mild burnout.  Whatever the cause, I have only myself to blame.

So apologies all around: first and foremost to our viewers for making you wait so long to continue the story, but also to our crew who work so hard to capture this incredible footage on a daily basis.  There are some positive changes coming to the JS0 production office in the near future, but in the meantime I’m just going to try to buckle down and make this show keep happening, one way or another.