Nicole: ‘We are doing pretty well so far - we have taken a bus, the SkyTrain, a tuk-tuk, and almost got arrested.’ Brian: ‘Yeah, and all before noon.’

Flying to Bangkok on a delayed flight and arriving at about 0130, Nicole suggested we find some benches and sleep. I dazedly assented. We found some benches (actually rows of plastic airport chairs) and each got situated on our own rows. After a while it got pretty uncomfortable, so I moved to the floor. The next time I woke up was because it was too cold, and I noticed Nicole had also moved to the floor next to her bench. After that I woke up and the sun was shining. We went to go do immigration and they got confused - our names weren’t on their list. We explained that our flight had arrived about six hours ago and that we’d just slept in the airport. They took us to the office and talked amongst themselves for a minute before asking what we’d been doing. We told them we’d been sleeping. They told us we were supposed to go directly to imigration. We told them we were sorry, but we didn’t know. They said we were lucky security didn’t find us, or we’d probably have been arrested. They then stamped our forms and sent us on our way.

We took a local bus through the morning rush hour traffic to Siam Square, which took about an hour. From there we took the SkyTrain to get to the Myanmar Embassy so that Nicole could get her visa. Now comes the part about backpacks. both of ours were too small to hold stuff for our travels and souveniers, so we decieded to get new ones in bangkok where they’d be cheap. Well, cheaper than the US and Singapore maybe, but not exactly cheap compared to Vietnam. Mine is a Lowe Alpine, medium-sized bag about 80cm in length. It cost me 1800B. The plan is to use it to keep all the extra stuff that won’t fit in my original two bags and then… Nicole’s bag is smaller and cost her 1300B, whereas a comparable one was selling at the North Face store for 2650B. I love haggling.

several hours later

And they’re late, by two hours. Nicole went to go pick up Lora from the airport, and we were supposed to meet at the Siam SkyTrain station at 1615, about 105 minutes after Lora’s flight is supposed to arrive. I don’t even know if Nicole made it to the airport, much less found Lora (oh yeah, this is what it was like to not have a cell phone). I do know that I have Nicole’s passport, so she has to find me.

one hour later

Three hours. Crap. Do I try to find them? How do I get word to them? Do I stay? What if they never show up? The childhood mantra of ’stay where you are’ doesn’t work as well as one gets older.