PENalty Card

     Kassy and I had the Chengdu and Xi'an trip pretty well planned with rough itineraries and hostel bookings for each day. As for our other trip, well we had the first night of 32 nights booked. John informed us that we needed passport photos which we managed to get (with a little help from our friend) a day before leaving. We decided to go to Bei Bei the night before we departed so we'd be closer to the airport. Luckily, Keegan a teacher from Bei Bei informed us that we would not be landing at the main Airport in Bangkok, but rather one about an hour outside of the city.

-Bangkok-

     On the flight to Thailand Kassy and I experienced a "Seinfeld" like moment. Being the amateur travelers we were, we did not have a pen to fill out our arrival card. Kassy asked if she can borrow a pen from the Chinese man sitting next to her. After filling out the card he hands it to her, then she hands it to me. The Chinese girl to my left asks if she can use it too. I figured it would be a safe bet to allow her to use it. Right about then the captain comes on and says we will be landing in about a half an hour while the Chinese man to Kassy's right realized that he had made an error on his card and wants his pen back to fill out another one. The card is all in English so it's a bit of a process that takes about 15 minutes. The girl I mistakenly handed the pen to happened to be a trip leader and had 6 cards to fill out. The man asks Kassy for his pen back, she then points across the aisle to me, and I signal at the girl to my left. There is a rapid exchange of words but the pen stays in the possession of the girl as she moves to her second card. For the next 25 minutes, the man does a complete abdominal work out, leaning back and forth while shooting glares as this girl as well as a few at and kassy and I.

     The last night in China, I would have put my feet in a microwave had I known how to turn it on. I stepped out of the airport and greeted the 98 degree ("I do cherish you") weather with a hallelujah . For the next three hours Kassy and I shuttled, bused, and taxied around Bangkok trying to get to our hostel. After the third hour, I realized two critically important things while traveling. One is that is that it's always in one’s best interest to have the name and/or phone number of the place where you are trying to go written down. Two is to pack light. I was still pleased with Bangkok's heat but much less pleased by the burning of my shoulders. With my new bag, I had packed five pairs of pants simply because I had room to pack five pairs of pants.

     Kassy and I finally found our way with the luck of a very helpful taxi driver (the driver went to a hotel to look up the address.) The "airport" hostel, that advertised the cities best view of the takeoff and landing for airplane lovers  was supposed to be an easy hop skip and a jump from the airport, which it was if the jump was over a croc infested river. While eating dinner on the balcony, Kassy let out a shriek, as a gigantic six foot lizard scampered up the opposite bank of the river. I'm no reptologist, but I'm pretty sure it was a komodo dragon. 

     The original plan was to meet our traveling buddies John and Thomas at the hostel. We decided that our back alley residential neighborhood hostel might be a bit tough for them to find at 1:00 in the morning after a 13 hour flight, so we decided to be good Samaritans and meet them at the airport. Now as the crow flies, our residential neighborhood hostel was only roughly 500 meters from the airport, as Kassy and Sean walk, about an hour and a half walk. On the way we stopped to get a little taste of Bangkok's famous street food. We do our habitual routine of walking up and pointing at someone else’s food then giving two thumbs up. The food was delicious, but uncomfortably spicy by the end.

     We got to the airport around 11:15 and had no idea which flights John and Thomas are on, or exactly what time they we actually supposed to be arriving. There were two different gates that they could have entered through so Kassy and I split up to play the waiting game and some people watching. After an hour, I was doing the Pontius Pilate thing saying we've done everything we could, we must have missed them. Kassy said she wanted to wait until 12:30 before we left. At about 12:27, John and Thomas come marching out the gate. There was a joyous celebration in the airport that continued well into the night. If it wasn't for Kassy's persistence we still would have been trying to find each other.