April 2006.
Flight Plan: O'Hare to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Bangkok, 17 hours on a United 727. The extra 5" in United Plus really make a difference even if you're only 5' tall! Go for it! And the price for this trip can't be beat. We turned in some Mileage Plus miles and paid only $60 each in taxes. Cool deal.
Vegetarian Food Plan on Flight: Don't see complaints in my journal. It says it was flavorful and the manicotti was good. Well, if I said so ...
The Chinese man sitting next to me was really chatty. I would have preferred my husband sit next to me, but Parth wound up assigned to the row behind me and neither of the (admittedly very smart) men in the aisle seats next to us wanted to change to a middle seat so we could sit together. The Chinese president had visited the White House over the past few days and Chinese guy was really proud of this. He talked all about it. He ordered whiskey with his snack. Flight attendant gave him one whiskey, he held up two fingers. He pays for extra whiskey, breath soon stinks. Mileage Plus doesn't give enough extra horizontal space to spare you from intoxicated neighbors who talk too much and spit while they're doing it. He won't stop talking, and now he's had 4 little Jack Daniels. While he eats for a moment, I put on headphones to curtail conversation and bury my face in a Laos travel book. It works. Chinese guy is soon knocked out and snoring.
Here's how you pass 17 hours on an airplane: Parth and I meet up for awhile in an exit aisle to stretch our legs. We chatted for an hour to pass the time. A girl seated in the exit row was sleeping and with her eyes closed, she looked exactly like one of the Olsen twins. She was tiny, impossibly skinny and an enormous beefy bodyguard-type man sat next to her. Could it be? No. But I kept looking and wondering. Then she woke up and I couldn't look anymore. I also watched three movies. We each had our own screen so I could choose the movies I wanted. I read Lonely Planet Laos and made a list of stuff to do. I read a few chapters of Blink, the popular book about unconscious intuitive decision-making. Apropos book, because I know a lot of travel decisions are made this way. The flight passed fast with all this activity.
Our transfer in the Beijing airport made me realize I have a completely unsuitable personality for The Amazing Race. Or maybe from the producer's perspective I have the perfect personality because they'd sure capture a lot of hissy fits on film. I tried to remember that in Asia, you don't want to protest too loudly and you most certainly don't want to flap your arms around a lot. Both of which I did in the Beijing airport. Here's what happened:
-- We need to go from one gate to another international destination gate. I think we arrived in Gate 12. We want to go to Gate 14.
-- Stopped by "International Transfer" desk to ask where to go. Man points straight ahead.
-- We go straight. We see "International Transfer" sign. Go through glass door and guy tells us to go back to desk we just came from. We're not yet frustrated enough to protest. On way back we see departure sign pointing to gate Gate 14.
-- So we follow everyone else, thinking we're going to Gate 14, but at Immigration we see only Domestic Transfer signs.
-- We go back where we came from, and are told to get Boarding Pass at the desk where people only respond by pointing somewhere else. Harumph.
-- We walk around and see Gate 14 on the ground floor. At least we've located Gate 14. But we're on the second floor and all entries to go to the ground floor are blocked off.
-- We go back to International Transfer desk and they again point, but we say the place where they're pointing tells us to come back to this desk. We say "Boarding Pass -- how?" Woman brings map and draws arrows. We follow arrows.
-- Turns out we DO go through Domestic Transfer immigration area, but through the "Channel 1" desk. Alas, there are no Channel 1 signs but we figure it out.
-- Curiously, the people at Channel 1 seem confused about our entry. It takes four people to figure it out. Finally they give us another form to fill out. This is our fourth form -- in the midst of all the walking around described above, we also filled out forms. It was really an incredibly productive hour if you think about it and ignore fact that we really didn't get anywhere during that time. Anyway, where do all these forms go? I imagine a cavernous room with tall skinny stacks of tiny forms piled high to the ceiling, all leaning precariously in different directions like a drawing in a Dr Seuss book. During my imaginings, it's decided we're allowed to go through.
We progress through another rat maze to make our way back to Gate 14. We're now on the opposite side of the terminal. We're reluctant to go outside where the arrows point. Going outside means leaving the terminal and having to go through security and everything!! But that's where the arrows point. And if we'd listened to the people who pointed before instead of thinking we knew better, we would have gotten here a lot sooner. So we go outside. Turned out, we made the right choice. We go through check-in and security and it's a smooth process.
We were amazed by how many teens and children were flying. Children everywhere!! Where did all these kids come from? We stopped at Starbucks and I did a hokey thing and bought a huge Beijing Starbucks mug. The mug is the size of most people's faces. How American is that. Maybe that's why Starbucks is selling that. It seems big tableware would be a novelty here.
We arrived at our hotel in Bangkok at 10:30 p.m. We were really hungry because the Beijing to Bangkok connection didn't get our vegetarian preference so we didn't eat the pork or duck dinners on the plane. The restaurant was closing at 10:30 but the staff were setting up for breakfast so they seated us. Every single item on the menu had meat, though! The waiter worked with us to get vegetarian stir fry. We had bean curd, tiny pea-size eggplants and larger chopped Thai eggplant, and peppers in green curry sauce.
WHOOOOOOOOOOOO-EEEEEEEEE! Gimmee some more water! Spic-yyyyyy! Welcome to Thai food again!! We also had a very good, lightly fried rice.
And the best ending to such a long flight ... really forceful hot water in the shower. Ahhhhhhh.
The next day we hopped on a two-hour Bangkok Airways flight. Yahoo! Not many tourists on our turboprop flight into Laos. Most others here are Thai. Not many Westerners. Exactly what we wanted. Seats are only two deep so all have easy window access. On a two-hour flight we get a full meal!
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