July 17th, 2009
July 14-15th–my short trip to Bangkok
Sadly today is the day I have to take Russill to the airport. He and I bravely set off on the 4:20pm Airport Shuttle–my belief being that we will eventually get where we need to be–it may take longer or go by a route I was not expecting–but we WILL get there. Indeed all went well and we arrived in plenty of time especially since our flight was delayed by an hour or so. The airport in Krabi is pleaantly small and we slide through all checkpoints quickly. Our flight is uneventful and voila–we are back in Bangkok. Now the tough part–we have an overnight layover in the airport as we arrived just shy of 10pm and Russ’s flight does not leave until 8am the next morning.
So we have a light meal and then scope out any semi comfortable benches for the night. Hmmm…it appears that this is the airport that never sleeps. That and there are a LOT of other people that are doing the same thing as us…so what we are able to score is a bench that is really about the right size for one small person. So Russ gets out his inflateable pillow (for him) and an airplane blanket (for me) and he cleverly puts his luggage cart at the end of the bench for his legs to extend onto and after a rowdy game of “I Spy” and some card games, we do a few puzzles in our books and decide it is “bed time”. We may have gotten a couple hours sleep when we rise at around 4am due to hordes of people invading “our” space. Oh well—my back was not going to tolerate any more time on the bench anyway…
After some breakfast for Russ and some horrendous coffee for me (that I really thought they were trying to kill me with–I have got to find some decent coffee in this country!!), we went down to check Russ into his flight…he is on schedule…and has to go through passport control 90 minutes before his flight. So I say my tearfull goodbyes (these are always hard for me–sorry Russ!) and go to check on my flight–Yes–lucky me, my flight has been delayed until 11:35am…so I have 5 more hours by myself now…
Anyway—After I do my time and get on my flight–I fall asleep the moment I sit down and wake up just as we start our descent…Best 80 minutes of sleep of the day–I get off the plane with no solid idea of how I will get back to AoNang…but lucky me—the shuttle is still running and I only have to wait 15 minutes for it to leave. NOW–the best part of this whole journey is that since I am getting to be a bit of a professional on cheap Thai travel I am now a valuable resource for two other couples who are lost in the system…Can you believe it?? I helped someone else who had that scared “WHAT THE ???” look on their face when the bus stops on the side of the road and the driver yells out in broken english “Going Phi Phi–get off!” I reassure them that this is OK—that they will not be abandoned–another bus will come and get them–it may not be fast or pretty–but it WILL get them where they want to go.
I arrive safe and sound to my family at the hotel and am feeling very VERY much like Mrs Columbus : )
