Finally! Not only did I make it to Brisbane, I also found internet access and have some time to write. And boy, do I have a story to tell!
My original 30 hours trip was expanded to an emaciating 50 hours when the plane that had just taken off at Bangkok returned due to engine problems. The high speed landing made the brakes heat up so much that it blew away a few tires – no chance we were going to Sydney that night. The airline put all passengers (probably 400) on a fairly decent hotel and promised to clear things up the next day.
You know there is this prejudice around that in Thailand it is extremely easy to find a hooker. I usually give a shit about such prejudices but this guy in Bangkok made me change my mind: I had just walked ten metres out of the airport and along comes a man in some kind of uniform that looked like airport authority to me. He asked me if I was one of the stranded Emirates travellers. After a brief chat he gave me his business card and offered me to send a girl to my hotel room “for massage and whatever you want.” I was slightly confused but quickly understood and gently refused the offer.
On the next day there was an employee at the lobby who obviously was the lowest end of the food chain in the airline office and was thus chosen to deal with these 400 stranded passengers, some of which were getting quite nervous. This poor lady didn’t have much information for us either, so after a while I decided to go to an Emirates counter at the airport and ask them for help. They put me on a Thai flight to Sydney. Of course they weren’t able to give me a direct flight to Brisbane because the connecting flight Sydney-Brisbane had been booked on Qantas and thus was none of their business. I would have been pissed off had I not been so desperate to leave Bangkok. Before they could take me to the Thai counter and give me the actual boarding pass they needed to fetch my passport from the airport security which all passengers had to give away when leaving the airport without a visa for Thailand. The clerk told me it would take her 15 minutes to collect the passports. Within these 15 minutes I sprinted to the hotel, grabbed my bag, checked out and sprinted back to the airport – all in the tropical heat of Thailand. I probably lost some weight simply through sweat in this action.
There where some Asian businessmen on the plane to Sydney who obviously had something to celebrate. They ordered a lot of drinks, gambled and generally disturbed about half of the economy class travellers (including me). There were some women among them whom I thought to be the wives of these gentlemen but they may have as well been businesswomen in their own right. However, one of them cought my attention: She looked like Kim Jong Il (you know, that friendly dictator of North Korea with a passion for lobster), complete with high hair and huge black sunglasses. Maybe Kim was on this plane in women’s disguise, no longer trapped in his stalinist country, no longer being denied his beloved lobster by such meanies as the US and China. I should have complained about these people. Instead I just ordered a gin and tonic myself and tried to catch some sleep.
