LA-Bangkok

Fifteen hours on a plane is a looooong time. I watched “The Departed” one and a half times. (It took a while, on the tiny screen, to figure out who was who and at the end I wasn’t sure, so I watched the beginning again to help sort it out.) I watched Cinderella so I could see the Bibidibobidiboo song, and found the movie to have held up surprisingly well. One can see how so much animation has never really progressed much from the early conventions set by Disney. I studied Thai. The rules of the Thai alphabet finally made sense to me after all these years (and reading signs and menus is working out pretty well now.) I got up and walked around the very crowded Cathay Pacific 747. I had a three year old exchange with the guy in front of me who insisted on having his seat all the way back, pointing my movie screen floorward, and making writing, eating, and reaching things under the seat extremely difficult. I did a lot more banging and pushing against the seat than was necessary (I had asked him to move it up when I was eating and he did a little, but then moved way back again.) When he leaned forward for a second, my knees were up to keep him from pushing back. Of course I couldn’t use the table then anyway. Eventually I asked him to move it up – he didn’t speak English, so he pointed in frustration at the seat in front of him. But about fifteen minutes later, the seat moved forward and stayed there for the rest of the flight. The picture shows another confrontation that wasn’t resolved as easily.

We were too far away to hear what the ruckus was about, but she wasn’t happy. The flight attendants tried to politely get the lady to sit down. I thought maybe my camera up in the air would embarrass the lady to sit down. She didn’t notice. (Sometimes I probably should use a flash) But the flight attendant did and later came by, and with a smile said, “I hope you won’t publish this.” Actually the flight attendants did nothing to be embarrassed about, and you can’t really see her face anyway. But the ethics of public photos and blogging and Youtube arise over and over again. There was an article in the LA Times on students publishing videos of their teachers on Youtube. But blog ethics and travel photography ethics are another post. In any case, I was able to blur her face for the blog.

We eventually made it to Hong Kong where we walked around the airport and had noodles for three hours before sitting down to wait for our flight. And a mercifully short two and a half hours to Bangkok. So we essentially lost February 13, having left LA at 11:30am on Feb 12, flown back over Alaska, crossing the international dateline, and arriving in Bangkok at 11:50pm on February 13. But we were through customs, got our baggage, and taxied to the hotel (not too far from the airport) by 1am.