Craptastic Voyage

Greetings from Laos! More on my new locale later. First, I must bitch about my journey from Bombay to Vientiane.

[Before I begin, I just want to give a big shout out to my Bombay homies: Sarada was the bestest hostess a boy a could ask for and a super trooper for running around with my touristy ass even while sick with the plague. Kristen made a perfect Karen Allen to my India Jones (and took no guff from the Bombay taxi drivers). Blondie Bear is the yin to my yang (and the ideal drinking partner). No one has ever affected me more than Jason. He completely and irrevocably changed the way I speak. Finally, I consider Parag's unexpected dinner crooning to be one of the highlights of my life. I look forward to seeing y'all in Boston when we all return to the states. Definitely count me in for the screening of your Bollywood debut.]

After a delightful tea (and food...and more food) with the ladies who run the organization that the KSG-ers were working with, I hopped in a cab for the airport. It took just shy of two hours to reach the airport. The traffic was terrible. Once at the airport, my taxi driver, who had flipped the meter on my request at the beginning of the voyage, decided to ask for a flat fee. Oh hell no. He wanted 350 rupees for a metered fare of around 250. When I asked for the card (the meters don't tell you the actual fare, you have to ask for the conversion card to figure that out) he got all pissy with me and whined about the excessive traffic. I tipped him well anyway (gave him 300 roops total) but this mild annoyance would pretty much set the tone for my voyage (minus my Jimi oasis, but more on that in a sec). I feel a list coming on....

1) I attempted to buy a bottle of water outside of the airport. I was asked for 20 roops (totally reasonable) but had nothing smaller than a 50-roop note. They had no change. Water inside the airport then cost me 40 roops. Meh....

2) Even though I was flying THROUGH Bangkok (and not leaving the airport) and even though both flights were officially THAI, I was not allowed to check in all the way through. Also, after having that discussion, I forgot to ask for an aisle seat. Bah....

3) I boarded my flight hoping that I'd have a plane with screens in the seatbacks but no dice. I also had a window seat (which I don't enjoy at all). Worse still, I was surrounded by a family. Small child in front of me, mother next to him, doting (read annoying) father next to me. Dad checked on child and mom approximately every 5-10 minutes. He also enjoyed sitting with his knees very far apart. Argh....

4) I was enjoying High School Musical (inexplicably the in-flight movie) when a fat dude decided to post up in the aisle to chat with his friend. RIGHT IN FRONT of the screen. I had to watch the end of this Disney Channel-tastic film out of the corner of my eye on one of those little midway screens. Grr....

5) Something I ate during my last day in India must not have agreed with me. Those who know me know that I'm pretty open with my GI issues. Sometimes, perhaps, too open. I will limit my comments here to this: I was one of the first people off the plane in Bangkok. I hopped into the first bathroom (just off the gate) that I saw. By the time I was able to come out, the entire plane had long disembarked. Shit....

6) Bangkok's airport is my least favorite so far, ranking behind the quaint-but-lovely Wattay (Laos) and the surprisingly straightforward Chhatrapati Shivaji. I had no idea what the hell I needed to do and there was no one around to ask. I finally hopped on a very long line to speak to the ONE person manning the transfer desk for economy transfers. Until I walked away with my boarding pass, I was honestly unsure that I was even in the right place. Hooey....

7) I decided it might please my mother to hear from me so I bopped over to the payphones ready to use my toll-free Thai number to use my calling card. Except that payphones at the airport bar toll-free numbers. My calling card is now extremely useless. Better still was that I tried a number of phones before resigning myself to a collect call. The problem with that? I left my little folio of important papers (passport, boarding pass, itinerary, etc.) on top of the first phone I used. Luckily, after only about 20 seconds of complete, blind panic, I was able to recover it. Yaagaah!!

8) Due to the nonsense of 5, 6, and 7 I was unable to find Jimi at the airport...

...which brings us to Jimi! I got to my gate in Bombay and there were Indian families as far as the eye can see, until I noticed a guy, youngish and seemingly as western as yours truly. I initially posted up a little away from him (to observe) and noticed him fidgeting up a storm. He was clearly a bit nervous. I felt bad. I returned from the restroom to find the seats I had been sitting in fortuitously taken so I decided to sit across from him and introduce myself. He was SUPER excited to talk to someone and immediately told me his life story. His mother lives in Bombay with stepdad and two half-siblings. She's Parsi (he's half-Parsi like Larina...but he's, sadly, not a Parsi Jew) and he visits her most summers. He grew up living with his dad in Oklahoma City. He's planning on being a doctor and...ahem...wants to go the University of Washington.

Yeah...I chatted up another 16-year-old.

At least he didn't make a face when I revealed my age like Hannah did (although she quickly apologized). He asked me if I wanted to hang out when we got to Bangkok since he also had a stopover of a few hours. He even came to find me on the plane (we exchanged seat numbers) to say hi. Unfortunately, due to my aforementioned issues at the airport, it wasn't to be.

(I was not trying to get with him, you nasty, despicable people. It was just nice not to hang out alone.)