Movin' On

June 16, 2012

This morning was our last morning in Kathmandu, and it is the last breakfast with our group. We have had such a good time with Ted, Neil, Dick and Nancy...we were strangers just two weeks ago, and now it seems strange to be going our own separate ways. We're the first to leave town, with Ted and Neil leaving late tonight and Dick and Nancy going out a day later.

We enjoy breakfast, finish our packing and head downstairs to check out and say goodbye. Steve is there to see us off too, as we climb into the van to head to the airport. Steve has been a great tour leader, always in a good mood, always informative, and always calm and thoughtful as we experienced challenges to our trip through Tibet.

We get to the airport in plenty of time for our flight, so we watch all the travelers as we wait...The international terminal at the airport is a little better than the domestic side we saw when we took our Everest flight, but not much.

Our plane eventually pulls up to the terminal...all boarding is done from the tarmac, fortunately it is not monsoon season yet...

Now, we've had a lot of experiences boarding planes in airports around the world, but the experience here in Kathmandu was extraordinary...and not in a good way...first, there are the multiple security screenings which always involve pat downs, and more security screening and approval stamps than we have ever received at a single stop...

...then there is a secondary boarding area that they crowd everyone into prior to final boarding. Notice the curtains on the right? Those are yet another pat down area, and here in Nepal they have separate security lines for men and women...and there are way more men traveling than women.

And why are there places in the world where there is no understanding of or appreciation for forming a line...there was a group of 20-30 young men from some part of SE Asia who did not want to integrate into the line that was already formed, so they formed a sort of freight train and just started pushing their way into the screening booth, completely stalling the existing line. Well, Michael put a stop to that by running a member of the line into the wall of the security booth, at which point the security guard told the rest of the young men to go get in the end of the line...

Once we were on the plane, we settled in for a 3-4 hour flight to Bangkok which was really quite uneventful. We arrived in Bangkok around 6pm and had to walk quite a distance to get through Passport Control and get our bags. Bangkok is quite a large airport with endless moving sidewalks...which they call "travelators".

Our hotel had a shuttle van waiting, so we hopped on, got to the airport hotel in about five minutes, checked in and got to our room. Due to the quality of some of the hotels we stayed in over the past two weeks, this room looks deluxe...and you know we had some rough places when are impressed by the bathroom too!

Before it gets much later we decide to go downstairs to the hotel restaurant and have dinner. Nothing fancy, but it certainly is convenient. The lobby is a large open atrium that looks impressive from the elevator lobby on our floor...

Before turning in, Michael notices that his departure card for Thailand Immigration has been stapled into his passport...makes us chuckle..we had picked up our bags in baggage claim and had one more security checkpoint to clear, and the immigration officer asks Patty for her boarding pass from the last flight. Patty turns around and lets Michael know that he'll need his boarding pass, to which Michael panics and starts searching his pockets frantically for his pass. Of course he had it, but got a little anxious. Obviously the officer saw Michael's reaction and said to himself "this guy needs some extra help..." and stapled the form in place. Patty's form was not stapled into her passport...

Not a very exciting day compared to most of the previous days, but we're halfway to Siem Reap, and we're looking forward to seeing Angkor Wat over the next three days.