[Oxford to Luang Prabang, Laos]
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport does not a good traveller make.
That is, if you believe the old saying that ‘smooth seas do not make a good sailor’.
It is too easy, too light, too liberating, too calm, too well-staffed, too organised, too clean. Too damn easy.
Antiseptic and lacking in charm? Sure, but that’s not what the Terminal 2-ites are looking for. They just want to get on the plane and avoid spending £50 for a coffee in the cafe started by a luxury brand to marinade people in its brand values.
One minute we’re waiting for the taxi in Oxford, at Civilised-o’-clock on a Sunday morning, still puffy eyed but stunned that we’re Actually. Doing. This. Holiday.
Not even 60 minutes later we’re through security wondering if we return like migrating birds to Pret or to try the dubious sounding Jones & Food, or whatever stupid name the restaurant with the primest real estate in Terminal 2 has. In fact we chose Jones (which rhymes nicely) and the Marrakesh Morning was surprisingly edible – but then again stick halloumi in anything and you’re 70% sorted.
No problems to solve, no cultural differences, no insights, no arguments, no drama – like I said, it’s far too easy.
12 hours later we roll off the Thai Silk (c) that is Thai Airways, body clock saying midnight, local time saying 7am. It is an expensive way to get out of your comfort zone, but having 6 hours to kill at Bangkok airport from 12am to 7am body clock time is one way to do it. Like ice in the Sahara, we turn from composed to batshit foul-tempered and disoriented in one simple flight, hardly able to spell our own names and about to punch each other.
Being, an older, wiser and softer traveller (which will be a recurring theme) I’d bought passes to one of the many Executive loungers. These cocoons of comfort – free buffet! Big chairs! Showers – line every corridor in the aiport and they offer another reminder of your status in life, as if schelpping past the big beds in the plane en route to Cattle Class didn’t rub it in. There is Mega Spice Lounge, more Thai Silk, First Uber Class – you get the drift.
We lower the tone just by stepping into the Miracle Lounge and within 5 minutes the girls are trying to go to sleep, convincing the body that the chair is actually a bed. It makes a Travelodge look classy but with free food – that buffet is actually quite pleasant isn’t it – we disappear 6 hours of being neither here nor there. Neither in the UK nor in Thailand really, and certainly not in Laos.
The reference in the headline is to the old Bangkok Hilton – not a hotel, but the prison made famous via several films, not to mention a few very unlucky western travellers who thought that drug smuggling was a wise career move. Compared to that we’re in the unlimited Ritz.
I couldn’t resist a shower yet the Property Manager in me was disappointed by the black mould on the silicon in the shower. You can buy a $5 spray to get rid of it in seconds, and I spend my shower time (at 4am body time) wondering what this means: is black mould standard practice in showers in Thailand? Or do the cleaning team hate the bosses so much that they leave it there as a sign of rebellion?
The flight from Bangkok to Luang Prabang is 80% empty and theoretically run by Bangkok Air but they sub-contract it out to Amelia Air. I didn’t even know that airlines did that. The crew are German and French and this confuses me even more. They certainly don’t speak Lao and hand the mic to their one Lao teammate for the safety briefings. Given that Lao is landlocked I don’t understand why they are talking us through the process for landing in the sea? Perhaps the pilot has one last unfulfilled career goal: surviving a crash on a Lao lake.
Or perhaps I’m delerious from lack of sleep – which will be another recurring theme.
We all pass out and wake up to this view and an overwhelming sense of calm and adrenaline descends – it’s going to be fun 🙂
Travels with my Family 