080415 Thaikarl - the "world traveler" screws up.

friends.  yall are going to laugh at me.  my ticket with korean air was for departing april 15th.  it said "depart 01:30 local time"
so tok and i got the van to the airport this morning, and arrived at 10:30.  very early.  there's not much traffic on the roads because today is songkran day.  my flight wasn't listed on the departure board.  the Korean Air counter was silent.  ???? i told tok we were just too early, they haven't posted the flight yet.  we hung around a while.  still no listing.  it began to dawn on me that something was wrong.

a helpful "airport helper" asked where i was going. i told him, and he said the counter opened at 8 o'clock tonight.  huh?  he looked at my ticket, and pointed out, that "01:30" is One Thirty A.M- you know, at night, in the morning. Not 1:30 PM- in the afternoon.  that would be 13:30 on the ticket.

oh, yeah.  that's true isn't it.
duh.

i missed the flight by 9 1/2 hours.  the "airport helper" said his company can sort it out for me for 1,000 baht. (30$)  i actually thought he said 10,000 bath ($300.00)  but i didn't bother to sort that one out.  fortunately there was a local phone number on a placard at the Korean Air counter.  after spelling out my last name with the NOT military word spelling "that is B as in Bangkok, E as in Europe, T as in Thailand .... etc the Korean air ladie told me i was lucky, i have a confirmed flight out at 01:30 on april 17th.  she reminded me that i needed to check in at 11pm, tomarrow night, as tomorrow is the 16th, and to not miss this flight, as my ticket expires and i will have no ticket out if i miss the plane.  that would be bad. 

and, in the fortunate category, my visa extension is good thru midnight of the 17th.  Whew!  don't want to overstay your visa.  not good karma, and there is the 500 baht per day over-stay fine- which i don't have.

Tok came back from the ATM, and i had to tell her my screw-up.  she DID say she wanted more time in bangkok.  she took it well.  teased me about my saying the flight wasn't listed on the departure board because we  there so early.  so we took the bus back to bangkok, which incidentally cost 1.10$, went back to the hotel 99 and got the same room as last night, #259.  they didn't even have to fill out a registration card, cause we were just there a couple of hours ago.

i check the ticket 10 times in the last few days.  and got floozed because america doesn't use 24 hour time.  this is what, the second or third time i have missed the plane leaving bangkok.  evidently something in my brain gets all clouded over when it comes to leaving here.

so we took a nap and took the bus to pratunam market.  most of the shops were closed for sonkran day (which is today) but there were some cloths vendors open on the small soi's in the area.  Tok was looking for bargins for cloths, and found a few things for 2 and three dollars each.  shirts and tops and things.  we took the bus over to MBK shopping mall, and walked over to Siam Paragon Mall.  We watched the last half hour of the movie "Apocalypto" in a big screen plasma monitor in the window at the Sony shop.  There's an apple computer store in the mall there, i went in to see the new MacBook Air - the worlds thinnest notebook computer.  too cool for words.

so here we are.  i used the ATM to take out $30.00 from my bank, now the balance is LESS than that, to pay for the extra night in the hotel and food.  it was pretty warm today.  95 degrees F and 45% humidity at 9:30 this morning when we went for breakfast, and that was in the shaded front of the shop.  there are still groups of people ready to assault you with water.  you have to get around them, or get wet.  songkran would be a good time for a car-wash business!  they douse cars, and buses and people with this oily water with what appears to be talcum powder in it.  washes off easily, but every vehicle has splatters all over it.

and due to pressing obligations, like getting back to work, my "recovery time" is going to like 1/2 a day.   we are pretty much going to lay around the hotel tomorrow i guess  so i'll have to get "un jetlagged" before i leave even.

but i get to hand out with Tok in Bangkok for more than a whole extra day! so it's not all bad.

Onward.  (again!)  see ya on the 17th!
Nu and Tok

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Read my Thailand adventure ::: http://www.thaicountrylife.com