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November 13, 2005
Chiang Mai to Hong Kong trip
The trip down to Bangkok was pretty fun. After consuming my bottle of wine, the cheese and some of the bread (which turned out to be days old rubbery stuff) I met a couple from Germany. Hannes and Ola are from Ulm, a city in the south of Germany that is the birth place of Albert Einstein. We played ‘guess what this Swiss German word/phrase is’. After a few beers in the ‘party wagon’ we decided to leave when we realized how drunk the Piper 100 sipping staff were—they were getting confused as to how many drinks we had.
On this journey the train was on time and I made a hasty exit at the Bangkok airport around 0530. Since my flight was not until 1320, there was plenty of time to kill...too much, in fact. After reading several dozen pages of Spycatcher, wandering the length of both check-in halls, paying too much for internet access and multiple lattes, I was finally able to check in for my Emirates Airlines flight EK384 en route from Dubai to Hong Kong.
The flight was running about two hours behind schedule. While waiting at the gate a Latino man came up to me and asked “Are you from New York?” Ah...no. We chatted about how late the flight was, his dozen years of living in NYC, charity work in Thailand (me) and his native Honduras (him) and the various levels of service we experienced with different airlines. This last topic is one I’ve had before with many people and can state, for the record and unequivocally, Singapore Airlines rocks and all American-flagged carriers do not meet the expectations of the experianced traveler.
Posted by stu at November 13, 2005 11:50 PM