Traveling time

We are sitting in Bangkok waiting for our flight…. I thought I would try passing the time writing but realize it might be a bit hard as I have only had about 4 hours sleep in the last 25 hours and those were in a plane seat so you know how sound of sleep that was:)

We will be with Steve and Rhoda in about 2 and half hours…assuming the flight is on time.  YEAH…can’t wait to see all of them.

Our flights have gone really well today… and so far been on time and we are hoping our luggage is going to meet up with us in Chiang Mai.  A lady from the airlines met us at the gate in Bangkok when we came off the flight to tell us where we needed to go to get our boarding pass and that we needed to go thru immigration etc.  I thought that was nice of them… she had our name on a sign which I walked in a daze right  past it.  Roger is a bit better functioning on sleep deprivation than I am :)  I guess to back up to the beginning of our last 24 hours…

We went to the airport with Brian and Trish.  Dean and Laurie met us there as we finished checking in.  We had time to stand around and chat for about 40 min and then said our goodbyes…making it even harder to leave.  It was such a precious time with friends there.

All went well to Joburg…and then on to Doha where we had an hour layover.  We had been given yellow with orange tags on our carryons to show we needed to go in the fast security lane.  There was a nice sign that said fast lane... and also a lady looking at everyone’s boarding passes to see if they belonged in the fast lane but not really familiar with the color coding system it seemed…which basically defeated the whole fast lane thing…and then she told us we needed to go to the other line..we started to but went back and said no we really need to be in this fast lane so she looked again…and said oh yes this is your lane so we “sped’ thru the fast security lane… I was desperate for a potty stop so we found one and there was a long line…of course…and some plumbing issues.   

There was a nice woman in the bathroom sorta mopping the wet floor in each stall as people came out.  She had a squeegie and a pile of wadded up toilet paper which needed to be renewed frequently and she wanted to clean each stall after each use….you get the picture…nothing speedy about that experience and rather nasty too.  When I was done we tried to find our gate which you would think would not be a huge issue but the way they numbered them…well its just to hard to explain on paper …just picture chaos and mixed up numbers and you get an idea…I share all  that just to say it was strongly confirmed that Doha airport is NOT my favorite… and yet we get to go there another time in 3 weeks!!  Who knows what that trip will hold?  We are just amazed to think they will have it in ship shape for the world cup in about 8 yrs!!

When we arrived here in bangkok we decided to check and see if our luggage was there since we thot we might have to go thru immigration with it.  Well one of our cute giraffe print suitcases was actually sitting beside the luggage belt and so we waited ….and waited…and waited…till the sign (yes there was a sign) that came up that said that the last bag just came out….so we went to report it only to be told the other one had already been sent to the airplane since it was checked thru to chiang mai and we could just leave that one there and they would get it to the plane…kind of scary but did not have much option and I am sure the guy would have remembered the other one clearly since it matched the one we had.  We figured that is why it might have been sitting to the side…guess we will know in a few hours!

We were quite hungry by this point so went to the food court and Roger had curry and I had padthai…my favorite!