Nightmare Travel Menace!

5 grams of Bali Kratom mixed with 2 glasses of wine and 5 mg. of diazepam barely allowed me to sleep last night.

Once my eyes were able to focus on my surroundings, this morning, I was relieved to know that I'd somehow made it out of the Cuban airport at which I was stranded, post-kidnapping.

It seems I was on some sort of FAM or press trip to (I think) Cuba. Once there, our group was abducted. A very controlled abduction. Presumably a government-sanctioned abduction.

Our captors were friendly enough to us--we weren't tied up, beaten, raped or made to stand on a box, arms spread out like Christ with a hood over our heads and faux electrodes attached. We just couldn't do much of anything. They kept us all grouped together, holed up basically. At one point, I recall, they allowed us the use of one restroom, so we all had to take turns bathing and pooping. Right as I emerged from the shower one time, there was some hullabaloo and we had to abandon our location and move to another hidden place. It got very tiresome.

Back to the nature of our captors, they were quite amusing. One of them even sold limited edition records, some signed and others with individually designed art work. It was mindblowing and I ended up buying 3-4 pieces, carrying them around in a black plastic bag.

It seems we went from a bombed-out, oceanfront location to the airport directly. We had to individually bribe one captor to let us actually pass through a fence to get into the airport. To quote a previous travel companion, this bribe was quite "jenky" (or "jenkie," depending on the Burroughsian spelling you prefer)--as in, very "ghetto." The bribe cost was basically "whatever you could spare" or "whatever you felt you should pay."

The "hostage" in front of me paid a few bucks, I think. I had a few $5 bills and a few $1 bills in my wallet...I think I paid him about $12.

Then we get to the actual airport, go through some strange pre-ticketing security where all of our bags are emptied out and loose clothes are later retrieved in piles in the baggage claim area--I make special note of getting my limited editing records back.

Then I'm staring at an Asian gentleman (I'd guess Thai by his soft features) who is able to re-book my return flight--obviously my original departure time had been delayed because of our kidnapping.

All of this manifests in my dreams and I don't even have any FAM or press trips lined up. Maybe that's my subconscious expressing guilt of passing up so many trips recently--the past 2 weeks alone, I've said, "no thanks" to U.S., Canadian and Caribbean trips simply because of the hassle of travel. But will pass, though, and this munkee will again ache for an airplane to take me to a foreign land (even if it's in Ohio).

Munkee, out.