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December 25, 2005
Flight back 'home' to Chiang Mai
Tuesday morning I took a negotiated 15,000 kip communal taxi truck ride alone to the Luang Prabang Airport to catch my US$80 10:10am Lao Airlines flight QV 637 to Chiang Mai. A tuk tuk would have been 10,000 kip, but I thought 15,000 kip was fair since it was a proper truck. Once at the airport the driver tried to pull the old “’Fifty’, not ‘fifteen’” scam on me. How many times does a traveler have to hear this kind of shit? How many give in? I was having none of it and angrily called him a thief on the spot, told him to piss off and walked away after leaving the agreed 15,000 kip on the rear bench of his truck. You’re not supposed to do that kind of stuff in Asia, getting rude and hostile, but the driver was blatantly trying to rip me off and my mood was less that relaxed about it. (Traveling under threat of scheduled departures does that to me at times.)
Once in the terminal I soon discovered that I was the first to arrive. So I sat down by the window, read the ever informative Vientiane Times, and stared out the window. My flight was late and soon the other Bangkok Airways Chiang Mai bound flight passengers were filing into the Gate 1 departure hall, including Jimbo. We spoke briefly but then my twin-turboprop plane finally pulled up. The mechanics started tinkering with engine number one on the ATR-72 which delayed things further. When we finally boarded the aircraft at 1100 this American woman in her fifties has conveniently placed her carry on bag in my foot space on at seat 14B. (Those small 
regional turboprops have tiny carryon compartments.) I asked the flight attendant if the bag could be placed elsewhere in the cabin, which got the American woman incensed. “It’s only a short flight!” Maybe I’m not the perfect gentleman at times, but this bitch was being totally selfish, inconsiderate and presumptuous. She hadn’t even bothered to ask if it was OK with me to take up the space. Finally she offered to switch seats with me so that she could keep her precious bag near her, and I had my leg room for the hour and some minutes long flight. She clearly was not happy with me and didn’t even thank me later when I picked up her pen that she dropped. Grrrr… Oh, I should mentioned that she was pretentiously dressed in high-end traditional Western-Laotian fusion clothing, which made the situation just a bit more ridiculous.
The flight was pretty uneventful after all that drama but my window seat (14A) view was obscured by the increasing post-rainy season haze and fog. Soon we touched down in Chiang Mai and while taxing to the aircraft parking spot, the pilots shut down engine number one before we made it to the gate. That was a bit spooky as they had been tinkering with the same engine back in Luang Prabang. I jotted the tail number (RDPL-34137) down and will be curious if there is some fatal accident in the near future. I can be morbid that way.
Once I cleared immigrations, grabbed my rucksack, and breezed through customs I was fortunate enough to stop a tuk tuk making a drop off as soon as I made curb side. Showing him my Child’s Dream ID card with the address in Thai seemed to kill any potential desire in him to take the silly farang for an expensive ride and he offered me a reasonable 70 Baht (less than US$2) fare to the Child’s Dream HQ office on Patan Road near the ‘super highway’. Groovy.
All is good, and it is great to be back in Chiang Mai. It is almost like coming home. Pamela is letting me stay in the spare room at her flat near Chiang Mai University, which is very kind of her.
Posted by stu at December 25, 2005 09:17 AM