Saturday, November 28, 2009

Welcome to Thailand

We are currently in Bangkok, Thailand. The story of getting here requires a brief mention of Thanksgiving.

Had a stellar Thanksgiving in Dubai - went to Palm Grill at the Radisson for real bona-fide turkey dinner which was definitely a step up from hot turkey plate at Harry's Bar last year (although Harry's definitely did us right for 65 dirhams.) Our dinner Thursday was a cut above for sure, although we were fairly lonely in there; I don't think there's a huge population of Americans in Dubai eating out for Thanksgiving.

Anyway, after staying up late and drinking a lot of fantastic grenache at the palm grill, we went to bed quite late under the assumption that our flight to Bangkok the next morning was leaving at 8:30. Turns out, that was an incorrect assumption. Long story short, alarm goes off at five, we take our sweet time getting up since we're a bit winded from the previous evening. We still have to pack our bags, and as I'm sleepily throwing things in my bag, I decide at 5:35 to check the exact time of our flight (was it 8:25? 8:35?) and notice that the flight actually departs at 6:55. 6:55? Hmm ok do the math.... that's 80 minutes from now. Shite.

So, we throw as much stuff into the bag as we can in the 90 seconds it takes to call a cab and get the taxi there, and manage to forget: a) a camera b) all of Dan's toiletries c) shampoo d) the credit card required to check in to our Sunday flight to Ko Tao.

We got to the airport as checkin was closing and managed to at least check in to our flight, only to be swiftly corralled into a long slow line for passport control. After waiting but a moment, a nice Emirati man came over and asked if I was Alicia and would I please follow him? He led us to the front of the line and directed me to a particular passport control officer who turned out to be none other than: ding ding ding, a student of mine. She apparently spotted me in the crowd and decided to spontaneously grant me a little favorable treatment, which I was more than happy to accept at that point. I am now an important person; I have wasta; I know someone in passport control.

After arriving in Bangkok though, we got it all sorted. I learned a long time back that you don't actually need luggage to travel and the airline helped us with a workaround so we will indeed be travelling to Ko Tao tomorrow. All is well. More later.

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