Day 203 - Bangkok .... 24th February, 2005 (Thursday)

OOOooooppps. Bit of a cock up today.

We went and enjoyed our lovely 79th floor breakfast and decided to take the boys out for a tour. I particularly wanted to spin around the canals in a "Jame Bon Bo" (boats used in a James Bond film).

We were due to leave Bangkok on Saturday afternoon (the 26th of February) and arrive in India at 3:00 am on Sunday the 27th. It is the only Cathay flight and you have to go via Hong Kong and change but we thought that we didn't really need another day in Bangkok (we weren't up to it I'm afraid) so we should try to leave a day earlier. That way we would also get some sleep in before going to church.

We rang Amercian Airlines in Bangkok and immediately were able to bring our flights forward to leaving on the Friday. No problem. Julie volunteered to go to the reception desk and book us into the hotel for another night, as I had originally only booked for one night and we were doing it on a day by day basis. I took the boys down to the ground floor and waited for our taxi driver. I had booked the same man who took me to the airport yesterday to come back for us at 10:00 am. Julie came down a little later with the bad news. Our hotel, The Baiyoke Sky was fully booked for tonight and there was not a single room (out of 675) that could be had. We would have to move to another hotel before midday today. Oooooppps.

The bad news about this was that it takes about 2 hours to pack us all up. The hotel room was a mess and I had got the boys geared up to go boating. We didn't know of any other hotel that we wanted to go to and would have to go through the searching all over again. Just to find a place for a night. Big change of plans. I checked again with reception and there was absolutely no chance. The only thing we could do was to pack up all our stuff and go on standby in case there was a cancellation or a no-show. Either way we had to pack up now.

We went back up to the hotel room (telling our taxi man to park up) and thought it all through. Where shall we go and what shall we do? I thought I was pushing my luck but I tried anyway. I called the lady at American Airlines. "Do you remember me? I just called and changed my flights to New Delhi from Saturday to Friday. Is there anychance we could change that again and catch the 4:20 flight today?" She was completely unbewildered and came back to me in about 20 seconds with "No problems sir. Would that be for all four of you?"

I have to tell you dear reader that this plane ticket is just the best thing ever. You can ring up with less than 6 hours before a flight departure and ask to be transfered to that flight. Incredible. We have changed just about every flight departure date so far and they just change the flight and send you a new e-mail with your revised itinerary. Dear Lord thank you for such an amazing and efficient air transport system.

So now we had less than 4 hours before we needed to be back in the airport checking onto our new brought forward flight to New Delhi. I called my brother in law in New Delhi just to check with him that it would be OK to arrive a couple of days early and what arrangements could we make to get from the airport to the house at 3:00 am in the morning. No problem someone would meet us there. Okay OK.

Julie, bless her, persuaded me to take the boys off on the boat tour and agreed to handle the whole packing up process and checking out whilst we were gone. We ran down to the waiting taxi driver and explained the scenario. We would also need a van to get us to the airport by 2:30 pm. He rushed us over to the river and we boarded a long boat just by the side of the Shangli-La hotel. Whilst we were gone he was organising a mates van to be at the hotel.

The boat trip was great and has to be done if you are in Bangkok. It was a pity that Julie wasn't with us.

(to be continued)