Tips in Transit

Having passed fleetingly, via airports, through the Arab and Asian worlds, I arrived in Australia mid-afternoon on December 13^th.   To some extent, due to the arrangement of my flights, I was able to mimic the Australia time zone during the course of my 2 days of travel.  Although the periods of sleep were rather abbreviated, they did accord with eastern coast Australia night    and as a consequence I was not entirely lopsided upon arrival.

            Few points of note for those who might encounter similar layovers in the new Bangkok Suvarnabh airport.

·         ‘Day rooms’ exist at the airport providing a place to sleep for travelers who have such extended layovers.  This is quite common as Bangkok is a central hub for intra-Asian flights.  I believe the rooms cost $50-60.  I never in fact saw the rooms, although I later saw the signage, as upon deplaning in Bangkok with 13 hours ahead of me before my next flight, I moved through immigration rather than remaining in the terminal.   Once out the other side, as my Bangkok > Sydney flight was on a separate carrier and I did not yet having a boarding pass, I couldn’t get back in to access the day rooms.  Honestly, I think this was a blessing as having arrived late morning in Bangkok, if I had slept all day my internal clock would have been precisely opposite the direction in which it needed to move.    

·         Having, by my arrival in Bangkok, been inside airport/plane temperature controlled environments for more than 20 hours, I did not, as some might have, take a cab in for a fleeting tour of the city.  However, with ample time for wandering I spied a sweet little park out the windows and bee lined for it.  If one exits the airport on the bottom most level with the buses and turns right, follows along to the end of the terminal building a well cared for bit of green space surrounds a small Buddhist shrine.  There I was able to sit for some time breathing in natural air (at some distance from the roads and buses) and taking in a bit of sun, both infinitely restorative.   

·         There on the corner of the terminal just opposite the park is a good Thai restaurant which is filled with flight attendants and airport staff, no foreigners.  It was ¼ or less the price of food inside the airport.

·         I spent the day wandering, writing, sitting in the little park, one brief nap stretched out on a row of molded metal chairs.  With about 2 ½ hours before my flight I finally procured my boarding pass and entered back into the inner terminal and veritable duty free mall of Bangkok Suvarnabh.  I stumbled across a Day Spa close to the E gates (there may well be others strewn throughout, but this was the only I noted).  Most of my life I would have passed by such things assuming prohibitive cost.  However, Rain, one of my SIOM classmates lived in Thailand for several years, studied Thai massage, and in our school trip to China in 2006 was ever in search of the cheap foot massage.  Upon closer inspection, the airport day spa was advertising hour massages, feet and shoulders, for 600bhat, about $18.  In I went.  I am certain that this bit of TLC combined with the lubrication of two glasses of airplane red afforded me a sound and uninterrupted 5 hours of sleep on that final leg of my journey on to Sydney.

 

            My cousin Alice was there waiting at the airport in Sydney and swooped me off immediately to the Coogee women’s baths, a find she has spoken of for years.  After a brief drive, we arrived before an eastern horizon all water.  She told me with a smile that she would ‘shout this one for me,’ (ie pay for the both of us), entry fee all of .20 cents.  I’m not sure when the last time in my life was I entered anywhere or anything for .20 cents.  Only a moderate rock wall separates the simple salt water pool from the Pacific Ocean.  We went for a relatively short swim as the temperatures were only in the mid 60s and the water rather brisk.  There was a quality of the air and water on my skin that were purely surreal.  What liberation, to be freed after 44 hours of transit into this warm, vital world of the southern hemisphere.