guesthouse. Did I mention that I'm in Bangkok?!
Ugh. It's 2:14 AM and I'm so jetlagged. I've never been one of those people who's been debilitated by lack of sleep so when I forced myself to stay awake until the wild time of 9:15 PM I honest to goodness thought I'd get a few more hours than 5.
Anywho, before I get to Thailand I think it's only fair to talk about getting here from Frankfurt. I had such high expectations of the German airport, it's only natural that I was utterly disappointed. There are too many crap things to outline, but I will say one good thing, being called "Bitte" is kind of awesome.
One thing Frankfurt had to offer (which I don't think I'll forget for some years to come) was a fabulous seat companion on the Sri Lankan Airlines flight to Colombo. By the time I got my boarding pass in Frankfurt it was 20 minutes prior to take off and I was convinced I'd have to sit in a middle seat of a middle row squeezed between screeching old Amammas enroute to Chennai. (Which the flight was FULL off and screaming kids). I was taken aback when I rushed in and saw that I had a window seat in the bulkhead. My short stubby legs rejoiced! And then I rejoiced some more when I took a look at who I'd be stuck with for the next 10ish hours.
We didn't even bother exchanging names but let's call him Bill for now. I hate to travel alone, think it's because I find it very difficult to wile away the time on these long distance flights. Sleep eludes me, I get motion sickness if try to read a novel and I can never find anything enticing on the inflight movie roster to watch. Even though I'm a total cantankerous hermit (who's getting worse with age) there are times when I can turn the switch on and become a very friendly, pleasant person.
Being forced to travel alone does this to me. Before I sat down I remarked to Bill that I thought I'd get stuck sitting "over there" and pointed to some fat red faced German men who were so large they were oozing into the laps of the people beside them. To which he cheekily said in an accent I couldn't quite place "Oh I feel very sorry for those seatbelts. The stories those poor bastards would be able to tell."
With that it was on.
I miss meeting people like Bill. He reminded me again why I'm such a picky bastard when it comes to men. He was an absolutely fascinating Northern Irishmen who spent his childhood bouncing around from country to country because of his dad's work. (They even lived in Toronto for a bit!) I love that world weariness that frequent travelers have. So this is what I found out. Bill did his PhD in viral studies, specifically mosquito borne viruses so he's done a lot of work for the UN in the great lakes region in Africa. My former NGO self was squealing in delight and then had to repress the maniacal grin when he said he'd done stints with MSF in west Africa. Turns out Bill's fluent in German and French. So why was he enroute to Colombo? He's doing a specialists program with Duke university in the spread of dengue and was headed to Singapore for research.
So while flipping through our pretentios reading materials (I had the New Yorker and Harpers, he had the Economist and Wallpaper (more points awarded here for stylishness!)) we managed to make the 10 hours fly by and hung out in the Colombo airport for another ridonculous expanse of time waiting for our connections. We both grumbled that it's such a waste meeting cool people in airports fully well knowing that the likelihood of ever crossing paths again is 0, unless you live in the same city. Then we buggered off to our gates.
So. What have we learned from all of this?
1. I should be sleeping
2. My taste in men has not changed one bit in the last 5 years.
3. All the good men are placed outside of my geographical grasp making them unattainable (see point 2)
4. I don't purposely mean to be a snob (or do I?) but is it just me or do you notice the more interesting folks tend to also generally have some kind of advanced university degree? Maybe I'm just very nerdy.
5. OMG! I'm in Thailand.
No comments:
Post a Comment