Time's Up

It seems like only yesterday we were lounging on the beach in Samui, yet here we are, thirty two days later at Bangkok Airport waiting to be time traveled back to Vancouver.

Call me simple, but I always get a kick out of leaving Asia at, 5:00 PM, flying over 8,000 kilometers and landing on the west coast of North America at 10:45 AM, six and a quarter hours earlier. With supersonic travel would you arrive before you leave? Beam me up, Scotty.

For whatever reason we were unable to check in on line yesterday and were told we had to be at the airport by 4:30 this morning for our 6:50 flight. That meant waking up at 2:45 and leaving the hotel at 3:45. By the time we checked in, cleared customs and security, it wasn't even 5:00, but fortunately, all the airport shops were open, which gave us something to do to kill time.

I was most impressed by one of the duty-free shops that had two bottles of a limited run (123 bottles) of Glenfiddich on the shelf for 59000 baht, about $2400 CDN. The same store had a cellar stocked with several vintages of Mouton Rothschild, Petrus and the California cult Cab, Screaming Eagle, all of them selling in the $4000 CDN range. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but Screaming Eagle is so rare and sought after, I'd only ever seen one other bottle in my life. Yet here was a whole slew of them right before my eyes. Impressive.

In the end, we browsed all the shops, sampled lots of cookies and just wasted time until we had to head to our gate for our 6:15 boarding.

We had no sooner arrived at our gate when the PA system announced we wouldn't be boarding until 6:40.

Crap! I could have used the extra thirty minutes sleep.

By the time everyone boarded and we were ready to take off it was pushing 7:15.

I've always loved that feeling of rapid acceleration as the pilot brings the turbines up to full power and you get pushed back into your seat. Just as I was revelling in the moment, the engines high pitched whine softened to a whimper and the plane slowed to a stop. The pilot announced that a warning light had come on and take off had to be aborted. We sat on the tarmac for thirty minutes while systems were rebooted and we were given the all clear to be on our way.

Despite the reassurance, I have to admit I remained a little edgy for the first hour or so of the flight, but we made it to Tokyo safe and sound, albeit an hour behind schedule.Read more