Thailand, the Final Chapter (for now)

About eighteen months ago I spent my three weeks of Christmas vacation with my friend Indira traveling to Thailand.We went to visit Indira’s daughter, who is married to a Thai “jungle boy” and was living in Chiang Mai. If you have read my previous posts, you’ve heard all about that trip except for our final experience of coming home.

Unfortunately, I got home and plunged right back into work and family birthdays and simply lost the impetus to write the final post. And I refrained several times over the last year from blogging because I knew I “needed” to finish the one story before I shared another. However, here I am a day away from leaving on another international trip that I want to chronicle and I still have the same dilemma...so, finally, here it is--the final chapter--we ended our travels with a unique adventure!

We had a wonderful last day together in Chiang Mai--slept well and gathered in the morning outside of the Guest House to head to the airport. A final farewell with our hostess--she was great and had gone out of her way to help us be comfortable--and we were off.

Our flight back to Bangkok with Thai Air was as nice as the flight out. It was good to have Martha (who was heading to Nepal) with us to navigate the Bangkok airport--which seemed packed.

Our flight back to San Francisco included a 14 hour layover in Wuhan, China, which Martha had investigated and discovered would include a night in a hotel as guests of the airline. We thought that was pretty cool, and I looked forward to actually being out of the airport and “in” China.

Our flight was over an hour late leaving Bangkok, so instead of arriving in Wuhan at 10:30 p.m., we arrived just before midnight in the pouring rain. As we went through customs (having to collect our luggage and exit) I tried to ask several folks for info about the hotel and each person passed me on to the the next person down the line until we were at the point of exiting the terminal. Finally, I got what seemed like a sensible answer from the last possible person before the exit--he said, yes, there would be a hotel room, but we would need to go out the exit door, turn left, and walk down to the domestic terminal in order to talk to someone from the airline who had the info and directions.

Okay. We could do that. Fortunately, Indira had grabbed a loose luggage cart and we had all our stuff on it, so out the door we went! It was still sprinkling. Once we turned left, we could see that the domestic terminal was about a quarter of a mile down the road--with the ever present airport construction which closed off most of the sidewalk. However there were a number of folks heading that direction in the street, so we felt like we were on the right path.

We got in the door of the domestic terminal, up the escalator to a large room with at least two long rows of China Southern Airline kiosks--and not a single person visible! We spent the next 15 minutes trying to communicate with a number of other airport folks that we needed someone from the airline to get us to the hotel. “Everyone go home.” was the constant response. I had been texting Phil who was trying his best to contact China Southern in the US, but with no success--when he did finally talk to someone they said there was nothing they could do because it was the middle of the night in China and everyone had gone home!

Finally, we talked to two policeman type people who seemed to take our dilemma a little more seriously and off one of them went. We figured the worst that could happen is that we would be spending the next 12 or so hours in the airport. But no, he came back with a young man with a China Southern logo on his jacket who spoke enough English to communicate with us. The young man reiterated the “Everyone go home” statement, but he said to follow him, taking us to a nice seating area. He told us to wait there and he would be back in 20 minutes to take us to the hotel.

True to his word he, and another man who spoke no English at all, showed back up 20 minutes later. They said to come with them,took our luggage and back out of the airport we went. They stowed our stuff into the back of a black (Secret Service looking type) SUV, put us in the back seat and the two got in the front and off we went out into the night in what was now pouring rain.

All this time I’m still in texting contact with Phil who had enlisted the prayers of the Dunkard Brethren folks on our behalf. As we left the airport we went into pretty much total darkness except for the lights of the car and an occasional other car. No hotels, restaurants, strip malls...nothing. After about 10 minutes I was starting to think I should not have read that spy novel the week before, because I was pretty sure someone was going to find our bodies out in a field somewhere--or not at all!! It didn’t help when Phil texted me asking, “ Any suggestions for what I should do if I don’t hear from you any more?” That really calmed me down!!! NOT!!!!

We discovered the next day that the airport is about a half hour outside the city of Wuhan, which is a city of over 8 million people. Most folks seem to live in high rise apartment type buildings, but outside the actual city, there is really nothing. Kind of an empty, somewhat watery land devoid of human habitation. It was much less scary in the daytime!

We finally arrived in the city...lots of road construction...and eventually the non-English speaking driver pulled up in a parking area and our young man “friend” got out. He turned and told us that this was where he lived and that the other man would continue on to take us to the hotel. He shut the door and walked away. And then we were back on the road again. It took us another 10-15 minutes to get to the hotel, but we did arrive. The man gave us our luggage and asked for our passports, which he then took to the counter. After a bit of conversation with the clerk and several other men hanging out at the desk, he came back with our passports, a room key card, and held out his cell phone for us to read. In Google translate it said: “Room 1718. Breakfast 2nd floor 8 a.m. Be in lobby at 10:30 and someone will arrive to take you back to airport.” He then pointed to the elevator.

So up we went to the 7th floor--only 12 shown on the elevator key pad, so figured it must be 7th not 17th. Into the room we went! What a relief!!

You can see that the beds were a little on the short side and, like Thailand, were a board with a thin pad on them-not a mattress. Definitely not a hotel that is used to catering to westerners, but it had everything we needed including a tea pot with tea cups/saucers.

The bathroom was tiny, but had a western toilet and a nice hot shower!

The view out the window the next morning showed a large shabby building directly across the street...

...but to the right was a modern building and the traffic was like any city waking up--which means it never quite went to sleep.

We got up and went down to the 2nd floor to breakfast. Most everything was unrecognizable...nothing western at all and, oddly, we thought, no tea or beverage of any kind. The little sausages were actually mushy inside, and the cute little pig, which I thought might be a steamed pork bun turned out to have dull paste inside. I know it looks like an English muffin, but it was a small bun, sticky in the inside. The noodles and cabbage, which I thought would save the day, turned out to be stone cold. We nibbled a little and went back and had tea in our room.

By 10:15, we were down in the lobby. I tried communicating with both the desk and what I took to be an information desk, but no one was interested in attempting to communicate with us. About 10:45, a young woman with beautiful long hair walked into the lobby and over to the information desk. It was pretty clear she and the man were talking about us as they looked and gestured our way. I got up and walked over toward her. She was me coming and came to meet me. She stretched out her arm and patted my shoulder and said, “Airport, yes. Car come. Airport, yes.” Then she motioned for me to go sit back down.So we continued to wait.

Just before 11 a.m. a van pulled up and the driver came in, talked to the desk and came right to us and said, “Airport.” We didn’t need a second invitation. And to the airport we went, eventually got on the plane and home we flew!

Cyrus had told me that I would be really thrilled to be back on American soil, but I was still surprised at the strong emotion I felt about putting my feet “back home” so to speak!

What an amazing trip I had--hard in some ways and stretching me on several fronts. If I had written this last chapter when I first arrived home, I might have been brave enough to confess that, at that moment, I didn’t want to ever go back. But after several months reflection, I realized that, not only would I enjoy going back, I look forward to doing so. There are things that I will do differently and I would be better prepared--and yet I know that another trip will be its own experience.😎

Since our leaving, Martha and Tee have had a sweet little baby boy, JB and this spring they made the move from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son. What a great reason to visit again and to my favorite spot! I think, however, I’ll fly into Mae Hong Son--having done the 1,864 curves on the road from Chiang Mai once is enough!!