Jennifer and I flew with our friends Margaret and Diane to Thailand over the weekend in preparation for our voyage on Semester at Sea. The journey was long: two overnight flights back-to-back from Denver to Istanbul and then on to Bangkok.
I’ve always felt this time of the year to be a “time between” that seems disconnected from the rest of life. The semester ends in mid-December, and then I always used to attend the Fall Meeting of the AGU (a big professional conference). After that, there’s submitting grades and Christmas and New Year’s and a few weeks of no schedule.
J.R.R. Tolkien invented a calendar (along with so much else) in The Lord of the Rings. Years were divided into 12 months of 30 days each, with 5 days set aside to fall on no date: two at midwinter (1 Yule and 2 Yule) and three at midsummer (1 Lithe, MidSummer’s Day, and 2 Lithe). These special festival times belong to no month.
That’s just how I feel about the weird time in transit that we just experienced getting from our home in unseasonably warm Colorado to our Guest House in sweltering, hot Bangkok. Our journey took us about 34 hours, but we left mid-day Saturday, Dec. 27, and arrived mid-day Monday, Dec. 29.
The Denver airport was a zoo, with stop-and-go traffic backed up for 30 minutes to drop us off and then long lines for security and check-in. We boarded our flight on Turkish Airlines and pushed back from the gate at 7:30 PM Saturday. Both Jennifer and Diane celebrated their birthdays (same day of the same year!) in flight, and the airline provided birthday cake.
We flew almost due north from Denver, spending the night crossing Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and Scandinavia. There was heavy turbulence in the night over the far north, but I got a few hours of sleep anyway.
Our 11+ hour flight landed in Istanbul about 5 p.m. on Sunday, having crossed 10 time zones. We passed over snow-peaks and giant wind-farms in southeast Europe and then descended below boundary-layer clouds in golden sunset light. The landscape was a lovely patchwork of green grass and forests of bare winter trees.
We had a five-hour layover in the airport in Istanbul. It’s one of the biggest airports I’ve ever seen! Like hanging around a mall all evening. We all ate reasonably nice food, but felt sooo sleepy staying awake so we wouldn’t miss our 10 p.m. flight.
On the second overnight, we dozed on and off while crossing Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and the Bay of Bengal overnight and then woke over Myanmar. We landed in Bangkok about 11 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 29.
It took us about 2 hours to clear immigration and pick up our gigantic checked bags: 4 months’ worth of stuff including clothing for many climates. Then we found our ride — a shared van arranged by our guest house. The van was crazy fancy, with Thai decorations and a “VIP” sign above each seat!
Bangkok is a huge, sprawling city of 11 million people (17 million in the metro area). We drove about an hour on giant freeways with heavy traffic to get to the center of the old city. It’s very hot and humid with lots of smog.
Our guest house is lovely — on a quiet alley in a historic neighborhood. There’s lots of ornate woodwork and very friendly proprietors. There are just three rooms, and our group occupies all of them: Jennifer and me; Margaret and Diane; and Larry and Susan.
After a shower and a brief rest, we walked across the street and met our companion, Stephanie, for a nice Thai dinner. Then to bed and sweet, sweet sleep!
Posts
