Saturday October 22 Homecoming
Trip Start
May 01, 2002
1
29
64
Trip End
May 01, 2009
Bangkok,
Thailand
Monday, October 30, 2006
there was one covered tub labelled "beef steak" and inside were tiny little steaks drowning in some kind of a sauce. it did not look very good but for reasons not known to me i decided to try one. that was a big mistake. it was so so so unbelievably good that all i ate that night were those stupid steaks. they were all filet mignon cooked to perfection, on the rare side of medium rare, and smothered in mushroom sauce
Suvarnabhumi Airport
. they melt in your mouth. pencil pigged out on arabian and egyptian stuff.the following morning was our time to say goodbye to egypt and to the really wonderful people at the hilton pyramids including sara, anas, ahmed, gilaine, and mohamed and everyone else. they are all so incredibly nice and helpful we hated to leave. we spent a lazy morning eating breakfast and packing and finally at around 11am we we received a call from the concierge that the hilton shuttle van was ready to take us back to the airport and a porter arrived and took all our luggage down. we checked out and said goodbye. pencil said a very fond goodbye to sara with whom she had become very friendly.
as soon as we entered the airport departure hall we were shocked back into reality and the realization that we were not in never never land anymore. there was a huge crowd and zillions of suitcases all jostling to get through the two security check points. it took a very long time and a lot of jostling before we finally threaded that needle. up next was passport control. same story, different actors. i put pencil in the queue and went to one of the bank windows and changed all our leftover egyptian pounds into u.s. dollars.
gulf air does not have a lounge in cairo and uses some kind of commercial service called eas or egypt aviation services. it was a horrible lounge with furniture thrown around willy nilly quite possibly by the hulk and a counter with some baked goods, water, tea, and coffee. there was no beer. my some miracle they had guava juice which had by then grown into pencil's favorite drink. pencil tried to use the ladies room there but returned saying you gotta know when to hold em. the lavatory was too dirty and stinky to use and she wanted to wait for the aircraft.
other than that, mrs lincoln, the trip went very smoothly. on the flight to bangkok, pencil and i were able to fit into the same bed and we skipped dinner and slept like babies until awakened for breakfast which we finished just in time to land at the new airport in bangkok called suvarnabhumi. don't even try to pronounce it. it's unpronouncable. even the thais can't pronounce it.
we walked across to the parking lot, got into my car, and hit the freeway and right away, my phone rang. it was gary wanting to know if i was back yet. yes i said and then pencil wanted to say hello to gary to i handed her the phone and she actually wanted to talk with gary's wife gay and they went on and on in thai probably about the trip (i heard her say peeraameed). it took her most of one hour to say it but i can summarize it in one sentence. it was one of the best vacations we ever had and nothing went wrong. praise the lord.
as for thailand, i have to say this. you have to leave it once in a while to remember why you live here. there's no place like home.
