Look away now

The trip to Bangkok was quite a cool one. I met some nice people on the way. A guy from New Zealand called Josh was sitting on one of the computers in the Airport. I had some time on my hands so I asked him what I had to do to get on the computers. He pointed over to a little coffee counter and just told me I needed to buy something from there and then they'd let me on. After copying him in his orange juice request and being commended on the action, he told me he was on the last leg of a world tour that took him 4 years and was heading on back to Auckland. We exchanged a few tales and I tried to help him find a place to stay in Hong Kong. Jess had written an email telling me of some places to go to if I wanted to stay there. What I didn't realize was that they were she and Maisie had stayed in. A sort of YMCA for women. You can imagine my embarrassment when I told him he should go there as I scrolled down the email looking for the info. Anyway, I did what I could and he seemed like a guy that could easily fend for himself (4 years out in the wild must do wonders to ones survival skills) and went to check-in for my flight. In the cue I met a cool Scottish couple that had literally finished doing a year in Australia and were on their way back home with a quick stop in Bangkok. They were telling me about a horror flight they were on when on their way to the Maldives when suddenly on engine failed to land and they had to turn back, turn the engine off and do a crash landing. The woman behind them was hysterical (not in a funny way though... although when they mentioned the word, I could help but think of the scene in Airplane when all the passengers cue up to bash the crazy, uncontrollable and "hysterical" woman!). We went through more "You are a visitor" check points, something I'm actually starting to like more and more. It's good to see the flipside to stuff. So many times when you come into London, you see all the poor people cueing up, waiting their turn as the rest of us just head on through the E.E.C. section. The plane was cool. I was flying with Emirates and the seats had a little screen in the front which actually had an on-board camera, seen from the pilots point of view so take off was most interesting. Landing was cool as well. It reminded me of those old ZX Spectrum F-15 games. You see the landing strip up ahead, line up for it and then wait patiently for about 10 minutes as you approach. I got a little nervous when I remembered that I was never able to land it. It all seemed fine for those boring 10 minutes... then I'd just crash the plane. Luckily for me and everyone else on the plane, this was not me playing computer games. The downside to the trip was having to endure the company of the arrogant guy next to me. He worked in the mobile phones industry and had a nose the size of a ping-pong ball which kinda made it hard for me to concentrate on much of what he was saying... which was a small bonus. It got particularly hairy when he decided to go into his anti-American spiel. Oil, Arabian Kings and Iraq being his main points of focus. And you could see the intent and passion he had for the subject as he raised his voice a notch and sped up his talking. I could just imagine his heart pounding away inside his chest, thumping up against his rib cage, encouraging him on "Go, Go" said the rib-cage, "A cardiac arrest is just what the doctor ordered!" He was a rude man too, tutting at the hostesses when they didn't have what he ordered and generally making their life difficult by refusing to put his seat up for landing and take-off, etc. Basically, being a bit of child. He was staying on the plane as it was going on to Dubai from Bangkok and when he realized he had to get up to let me out, he threw the blanket he was using off, to expose an unzipped and unbuckled area of his body I'd really rather have known little about. The people that were walking by in the isle might have fainted if they were of the fragile sort, but luckily, none did. Once he respectiblized himself, he got up and let me off the plane. The first thing I noticed about Bangkok was the heat. Everybody prepares you for it and you always go along with it but this was crazy. It was one in the morning and it was hotter than any day I've ever experienced... and this was their winter apparently. I'd had to be here in the summer... when it's actually the rainy period. The humidity must be unbearable! Everything is air conditioned. Which is weird cus it's actually very cold in all the cars, trains, undergrounds, supermarkets, shopping centres and cinemas and then when you come out of anything, you just get hit by a wall of heat! Not that I'm complaining :-)