Ancient Kingdoms

Katherine drove us to the airport in frigid cold at 4:30 a.m. for our 6:25 a.m. flight to Chicago. The flight was initially delayed for crew time between flights, then we boarded and taxied out, but the pilot came on speaker to say we were taxi-ing back to the ramp because of a brake indicator light. The anti-lock brakes had frozen on the plane and needed to be heated for 20 minutes prior to take off. We got into Chicago almost an hour late, but we still had plenty of time to catch our flight to Tokyo. The gate was about as far away from our arrival gate as any two gates can be at O'Hare, but the walk was good for us, given that we had a 13 hour flight ahead. 

At the gate, we were approached by a woman who noticed the OAT logos on our jackets, and that led to our being introduced to two couples from Winnipeg, Canada, who were on the way to the same tour, except they were not taking the pre-trip to Burma. They would be in a group a week ahead of us. We were sorry about that, because they were very nice people and would have been good traveling companions.

ANA was an excellent airline to Tokyo, the service was Japanese and the food was pretty good. We read, watched a couple of movies each, but didn't sleep much, if at all. At Narita we found outlets to recharge our pads (though it wouldn't have been absolutely necessary to do so) and chatted with the Canadians. We also tried to walk a bit, since we had been sitting long and had another 7 hour flight ahead. Once on the ANA flight to Bangkok we were determined to get some sleep. When the drink cart came around I asked for Scotch. Instead of handing me one of the little bottles, the stewardess dug out a pint jug and poored me a generous glass. I mixed it with water and used it to down a sleeping pill. I was out for three hours! Mary also managed a couple hours of sleep, so we weren't in bad shape when we arrived in Bangkok.

The airport at Bangkok is large, new, and quite nice. But it is so big that there are several exits from Customs spread far apart. Also, OAT was bringing in a number of different groups at the same time. This made it rather confusing to find our proper contact. Since all of the groups would be going to the same hotel, it seemed rather odd to us that they were so intent on separating everyone at the airport. In the end, we were the only two passengers in a van to the hotel. The hotel room was very large and nice enough, though a bit old and threadbare. We had no trouble getting to sleep, but were were awake well before the alarm or wake up call.