Bye Bye Bangkok

After a long sleep, I has a great work out and a leisurely breakfast by the River. 

I love dim sum and they had great big, serve yourself steamer baskets. After some careful packing - where I seemed to have gained some room, I sent everything down for storage and I headed out into the big city. I did not have any specific plans, but I knew I needed to be at COMO Shambala at 3 pm for my Thai massage.  

I took the boat over the river and followed a lady that looked like she knew what she was doing and ended up at the skytrain. This was pretty easy to use with everything also being in English, so I decided to go to the middle of town. I wandered through some shops and strangely they all seemed to be connected. I am not sure how you would ever find something if you needed something specific.  

I enjoyed watching the people and realized that occasionally I was being watched. I hopped the skytrain again and chose another location and did roughly the same thing. I only made a purchase in one place called Labrador and I got some cute Eco things and even though the shop girl didn't speak English, we managed.

It was getting close to my appointment so I flagged down a taxi and was soon at the spa. I swam around the giant hot tub until I was pruny and then I went and got my massage. Thai massage is not like a normal massage - no oil and no naked. So you put on the pajamas and then climb onto this futon like bed with curtains around it - I heard at least two other people getting massages next to me.  

For the next hour and half, she applied direct pressure to a variety of ouchy place and then alternated this with stretching me. It was not relaxing, but I think it was therapeutic. When we were done, she said, something's not right there and I said what and she pointed between my shoulders and said, you've got a problem and I said I know that's why I came here and she smiled - I blame the elevator door incident in Iceland.

I now had about 2 hours before Sue was going to collect me at the hotel and my plan had been dinner, but after 35 minutes in dead stop traffic, I knew that was not going to happen. Having visions of me and Oka on the motorcycles racing toward the airport, I paid the cab and got out and walked, soon I was at the skytrain and I retraced my steps to the boat and the hotel. No time for dinner, but there was time for a last glass of wine.

Sue left me at the edges of the airport and her colleague negotiated check in and immigration in roughly 15 minutes. The airport is huge and I walked around making sure there wasn't anything I needed and then I went and waited in the lounge. Before I knew it, it was time to board and I was all settled in my seat with everything stored in my lockers.  

As the plane took off, I promptly fell asleep and didn't emerge for 9 hours when they turned on the lights for breakfast. I had scrambled eggs and croissants.  

I had fast track through London, and it was my first time using my new visa, worked a treat. My suitcase arrived covered in slime - thick goupy slime. After 3 disinfectant wipes, I scraped it off with my ticket - gross!

I walked over to the bus terminal and bought a ticket to Gatwick airport, which is about an hour from Heathrow. I missed the first bus because I was standing in the wrong line. I went back and explained this to the ticket lady who told me to listen better. I explained this was not a listening problem it was a being an idiot problem, and she thought this was funny. I managed to make the next one and arrived about an hour later. I checked in and wrote some blog.

When it finally came time, the monitor said go to gate 113, so I did and it was a long ways away. When I got there, there were a hundred other people wonder why there wasn't a gate up. Finally, a guy from another airline came over and said there had been a mistake, we were not at gate 113, so he sent us back to the main terminal, which was difficult because the system is designed to be one way. Together, we all figured it out and arrived back in the main terminal to see we needed to be at gate 55, so we all went there in a mass.

When we got there, there was clearly lots of confusion and anyone that could not navigate stairs was sent another direction, those that could navigate stairs were eventually sent out on a bus and bussed over to gate 104, seriously. This caused a delay, but they made some of it up in the air. Arriving in Inverness, I found my friendly taxi driver, who loaded me up and drove me to Thurso.

We arrived exactly 24 hours after my plane had taken off from Bangkok and considering it had taken me 3 days to get to Ha Noi, I thought that was a fairly amazing result. It was good to be home, and my furry little friends seemed happy to see me, particularly Thatchy.