Bangkok Blues

January 26

10:15 AM

Bangkok Airport

Our flight was 2 hours late leaving Honolulu, so we had to hurry to catch our connection in Tokyo. No time to walk around and enjoy being on the ground. I was also sad to miss out on my last chance to have edamame and McDonald’s. But I was glad that we didn’t get stuck in Tokyo for the night. Which would have messed up our whole travel schedule and caused even greater distress than what I was already experiencing in trying to reconcile myself to our vacation ending.

We had an 11 hour layover in Bangkok. For once I was prepared and reserved a room at a hostel near the airport weeks before our trip. Once we arrived in Thailand, however, Kat didn’t want to leave the airport and run any risks of missing our flights, getting things confused in immigration, etc. After being in transit for over 20 hours with nothing more than 20 minutes of dozing, I didn’t care. I was delirious. And I was angry that the “transit lounge” had only 25 reclining chairs for about 100 people desperate to sleep. I was in a foul mood, muttering to myself, and the only thing that calmed me down was a chicken sandwich meal from Burger King. Then we opted to spend 6 hours in the airport hotel for an exorbitant price. Doesn’t matter—it was nice to lay down for at least 5 hours.