Day 13, In Transit - Part 2: Detoured!

(Posted by Andrew about the events of Dec 24; en route from Kathmandu, Nepal to Yangon, Myanmar... in theory.)

Our travel day started well with our early morning flight from Kathmandu to Delhi, as a clear day gave us a beautiful final view of the Himalayas. It's easy to lose perspective on how high they are, until you realize the plane is at cruising altitude and there are still quite a few peaks we would barely clear. (Contrast this to flying from Calgary to Vancouver: you can hardly discern any altitude difference on the Rockies around Banff and Lake Louis.)

We hit trouble in Delhi, though.

Stepping back, when we booked the flights for today we had healthy connection times in each city along the way. Unfortunately the airlines rejigged their schedules a few weeks later (there outta be a law!) leaving us with only an 85 minute connection time in Bangkok. When we landed in Delhi and saw our flight was delayed by 90 minutes we knew all hope was lost. It ended up being almost two hours behind schedule, and when we finally got underway the captain announced that the reason for the delay was so inbound passengers could make the connection onto this plane. This made us both very cranky since it meant we were going to miss our connection in Bangkok, and that was with an entirely different airline. I spent the whole flight thinking out logistics of how we were going to find our bags, a hotel, another flight to Myanmar the next day, etc and had pretty much mentally declared Jet Airways as the worst airline ever...

... until we got to Bangkok airport (which is HUGE) and found a concierge waiting at the top of the jetway holding a sign with our name on it. Turned out that Jet Airways had realized they had messed with our connection and had arranged a hotel, transportation, dinner & breakfast, and already had us booked on the first flight out the next morning. So Jet Airways is awesome; I feel bad about any negative thoughts I had during the day.

Now Christmas Eve finds us in an airport hotel in Bangkok, not the Governor's Residence in Yangon. However, it could've gone a lot worse, all things considered. The bad news is that Santa won't know where to find us to bring us our presents tonight; the good news is since we've cleared the airport now we can say we've been to Thailand.

Also I have an excuse to link to this song. (Kids, ask your parents.)