trouble in bangkok

so i got off-topic a bit (suprise suprise) on that last post; i meant to tell you of all the bad things that happened to us and i got caught up in the splendor and glory of the terracota warriors...but i digress.



mom freaked out a little when the taxi driver we hired at five in the morning couldn't get his car started and we were standing in the rain, wondering whether we should wait for this guy to get his vehicle working or ask for another taxi. we waited, and he got it going, and we were on our way to the airport.

kind of.

turns out the driver didn't know where xian airport was. now i can't read chinese, but i could tell from the big signs with airplanes on them along the highway that we were going in the right direction - sometimes. at other times, the driver would deviate from the proper course and end up on empty streets in industrial areas. he almost hit a bicyclist at one point, although, to be fair, the bicycylist did come out of nowhere and it was really hard to see the bicyclist what with the windows being fogged up and all (the driver apparently didn't know how to work the defroster). after asking a handful (not a plethora) of roadside people how to get to the airport, the driver was on his way. all we had to was cross a really long bridge over a marshy riverbed and we'd be there.

unfortunately, the back left tire of the taxi blew out midway across the ten-kilometer bridge and i found myself standing on the side of the road, shivering under a little pink umbrella, looking down at cranes and other assorted waterfowl, as the driver hummed to himself and changed the tire. it would have made a great picture, me standing there, but mom was understandably freaked out in the car, so i didn't want to bother her. i stood there in the rain as the sun came up, drinking in the set of circumstances that had led to me standing there under that pink umbrella on a long bridge at a quarter past six on a rainy july morning in shanxii province, china.

we were back on the way to the airport, now an hour into our 30-mile trip, and on the airport grounds when the driver decided to freak us out one last time by driving the wrong way down a one-way street - into oncoming traffic. an airport policeman informed him that his head had apparently been inserted up his azz and pointed us in the right direction. our mr.-toad's-wild-ride-esque adventure came to a finish when he dropped us off at the international departures area of the airport. we tipped him, thanked him for the ride, and went inside.

you're supposed to arrive two hours early for international flights, and it was now only an hour and a half until our 7:45 a.m. departure time, but all turned out well because the airport was not very busy at that time, so early on a saturday morning. we made it through customs and had an hour to sit around and wait for our flight to bangkok, which went uneventfully. en route, however, i did take lots of pictures of clouds, with which i have decorated this posting.

we zoomed from bangkok's new international airport to a hotel i'd booked on sukhumvit road. then came naptime because it had already been a long day, and for mom, a stressful one. she'd been worried about the taxi in china, worried about being late to xian airport, worried that the taxi driver in bangkok was going to stick us with an exhorborant charge when i refused to pay the 450 baht ($14) rate they quoted me at the airport taxi stand even though the guy at the hotel reservations desk had told me not five minutes earlier not to pay over 300 baht ($9) for the 20-mile trip from the new airport to central bangkok. all these stresses built up for mom, and she opted to spend the entire rest of the day and night in the hotel room, opting to come out only to eat dinner with me in the hotel restaurant later that night.

we got up the next morning in plenty of time, loaded mom's stuff into the back of a taxi, and booked it to the airport. this trip was completly easy and completely uneventful, which was a nice change, especially in light of what happened next: we waited in line at the china air check-in counter and thought we were a solid two hours early, like we were supposed to be, but it turned out that we were 24 hours late!

excuse my french, but HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!! mom screamed. my heart sank. the counter lady looked sad for us, but there was nothing she could do: the printout that i had handed her from orbitz.com, the same one we had studied repeatedly to verify times, said bright and clear that her flight home left at 8:25 a.m. on Saturday, July 28th. we were at the airport on Sunday, July 29th.

"doh!" doesn't even start to describe it. i felt two inches tall. i'd booked the ticket online in pingyao five or six days earlier, and we'd both looked at it on the screen many times, and we'd both pored over the printout, yet still we'd shown up a day late, and, to mom's great dismay, all flights home were quite booked that day, and there were 40 people waiting in taiwan on standby to go to LAX, lest she decide to fly from bangkok to taiwan and take her chances there getting back to america.

we sat down, crushed, trying to decide what to do. i tried to keep a brave face but i was dying inside to see my mom crying like she was. it was on the verge of uncontrolability. we paced back and forth, inquiring at ticket offices about the chances of getting her onto a flight back to LAX as soon as possible. each time, however, we got shot down. mom said she didn't care how much it was: she wanted to go home.

then, a godsend.

this guy in a nice black suit (who looked like mola ram from indiana jones and the temple of doom, but i won't hold that against him in light of what he did for us) saw our consternation and asked me if there was anything he could do to help. turns out he worked for eva airways and (after sitting us down and bringing us coffee) was able to get mom onto a flight leaving that morning at 11 a.m.! mom gladly paid the money to get home - we figure we'll worry about potential refunds later on - and the man took her information and his very pregnant assistant, a lady with a beautiful smile who had been working her cel phone on our behalf for the last hour, handed mom a ticket home.

by this time it was 9 a.m. - two hours before the flight was due to leave. i wanted to hug the man and lady who had helped us soooooooo much, but it seemed that it would have been uncouth. mom's tears of desperation transmogrified into tears of thanks and gratitude as she flipped through the tickets, which would transfer her to LAX via kuala lumpur, malaysia, but then to fret-filled tears of worrying as she prepared to go through customs and begin the long journey home - alone.

"i don't want to leave you," she said, crying, as she prepared to go through the customs checkpoint. "don't worry - i'll be okay," i said, typically oblivious to her consternation at the upcoming solo flight and all the worries she had about successfully changing planes in kuala lumpur, etc. "i know you can do it," i told her. "just follow the signs."

mom disappeare behind the partition, 22 hours from home, and i sat down in an airport lounge and just waited. it had been a hell of a morning. i felt bad, and would continue to feel bad all day. causing all that extra stress to someone who didn't need any extra stress'll do that to a guy.

i waited until her flight read "departed" on the big information board, then caught a taxi back to the hotel on sukhumvit road, and began the last two weeks of my vacation - alone!