Thailand - A Nightmare Journey

Well the original plan was to arrive in Bangkok at 6:30pm on Tuesday night, check into my hotel, have a couple of drinks and wake refreshed on the Wednesday morning for some serious sightseeing. All this planning went out the window once I arrived at Birmingham aiport on Monday night. My flight from Birmingham to Dubai was delayed by 1 3/4 Hours. My transfer time at Dubai, for my Bangkok flight, was 1 3/4 Hours!!! I was promised by the airline staff at Birmingham that my flight was being held as there were 15 other passengers going onto Bangkok. If they didn't hold the flight for us, they said they would put us on another carriers' flight. They lied to us :-( I checked on the internet for other flights from Dubai to Bangkok and there wasn't any. On arriving in Dubai at 0930, we were told we had to wait until 2300 for the next flight to Bangkok. So off we went to a hotel for the day :-(

I spent the day in Dubai going around two different shopping districts. One was very much an arabic district. It was full of shops selling gold in every form possible. This would have been ideal if it was goldI was looking for. Unfortunately all I wanted was a fresh pair of undies as mu luggege was marooned at Dubai airport. The shops I did find only wanted to sell me 10 boxes of 10 boxers!!! Eventually I did get some fresh undies, razors and dehodorant (mine was confiscated at birmingham). If that was the arab shopping the next area was definately the western district. The shopping centre was as big as meadowhall but unlike meadowhall, every shop was a designer outlet but definitely not designer prices. It was bizarre being in an arab country but 90% of th people in the shopping centre were wstern. Whilst there, I decided to treat myself to a couple of Timberland shirts as I needed a fresh one for the rest of my journey. The journey between the two districts took me down the road in the photo. Ten years ago, most of the buildings in that picture didn't exist, it was just desert.

Finally at 11pm my second night flight in as many days left on time for Bangkok. I managed to get an emergeny exit seat so I had plenty of leg room. Unfortunaltey next to me was a miserable tiny Thai man. He seemed to fill every bit of spare space possible and just be generally annoying. When I said 'hello' he just grunted in return and when he was a asleep, he kept moving up next to me :- My revenge came by accident. I got up towards the end of the flight and stood on his foot. He woke up rather startled :-)