Bangkok or Bust

Friday, Aug. 6, 2010

8:32 am

            First day in Bangkok! My plane landed around 9:00 pm last night.  I've just woken up and my computer is sweating profusely from the humidity. I tried to get word out on facebook that I made it here safely, but the internet only lasted a few minutes and cut out as I was posting my status update. Hopefully it went through.             The flights went great! I had three: a one hour flight from Orlando to Atlanta, a 14 1/2 hour flight to Seoul Korea, and a five and a half hour flight to Bangkok. I met a few interesting fellow travelers. I sat next to a woman who was traveling with her family after visiting their daughter in Florida. She was a reformed Baptist and was very excited to hear about where I was going. On the flight to Bangkok, I sat with two Americans. One was a regular world traveler who had been in a car accident and gotten two fake knees put into his legs just four months prior to our flight. The other was a quite large army guy, who was going to his first station in Korea. He was leaving behind his wife and newborn of only four weeks old (only two of which, he'd been present for). I can't imagine what it must have been like for him to leave home. He wouldn't see the wife or child for another year.

            My connection in Korea was rather exciting. The flight to Korea had left about a half hour late and my layover was only going to be an hour. By the time I got off the plane, I had less than 20 minutes to get to my gate, which was a good distance away. I walked as fast as I could, trying to get through the heard of travelers who were in no hurry. I made it to a plaza where there were different paths to take for selections of gates. My gate was 14 and the lowest number I saw was around 25. I spun in circles for a while looking at the numbers over and over, wondering if 14 might be somewhere with 25-40. I saw one path without any gate listing, so I took it and eventually saw a sign: Gates 10-25. Finally! I hustled down as fast as I could without drawing much attention to myself. I eventually came to a man holding a sign that said "Bangkok" on it. I motioned to him and he told me to hurry and pointed in the direction of the gate. I finally started running. It was 3:00 or 4:00 am in Florida and my legs felt like jello as I ran toting my 30 lb backpack. I made it on the plane five minutes before departure! I walked down the aisle looking for my seat: 39B. I had aisle seats on the two previous flights and I knew that since my letter had been "C" that this flight I would be between two people. To my surprise, 39B was an aisle seat. There were just a few rows that, instead of having 3 seats near the window, had only two. Thankfully, mine was one of those. However, no only was there only two seats, but no passenger had been assigned to the window seat next to me. I was ecstatic, because I had only slept about two hours collectively since I had woken up to leave that morning. I made myself comfortable propping two pillows against the window, covering myself with two blankets, and utilizing the two seats (I sat in the window seat, but rested my legs in the space for the isle seat). I slept nearly the entire five and a half hours. Only waking once to eat supper and fill out my immigration form.

            Now, I had a pretty good feeling that the one bag I checked didn't make my last flight since I had barely made it. So it was no surprise that I was at the baggage claim and my suitcase was not. I went to the baggage claim service and they looked up my claim ticket and told me it would be arriving in an hour. I called Pastor Doug and told him I had made it and asked if he wouldn't mind waiting. He agreed, so I waited. An hour and a half later, the carousel for the plane they said would arrive 30 minutes prior had not yet started. I returned to the baggage claim service and they said that the carousel had just started and offered to go get my bag for me. I took them up on that offer and waited.

            Around midnight, I finally met up with Pastor Doug, who was with his two children who looked more tired than I have ever seen any conscious human. They had miss-read my itinerary and had been at the airport since 4:00 pm (hours before I had landed in Korea). Nevertheless, they were all in good spirits and happy to see me. I'm so thankful that God made my trip go so well. I know I was meant to have every seat and that He had my back the entire time!