I’ve finally left London!

6am in Bangkok and I cant sleep. Jet lag is an absolute bastard and I know I shall be knackered in the middle of the day and barely able to stay awake this evening. Arrived at the hotel at about 2am local time and I think I may have had about 90 mins of sleep all night.

Flight from London was fairly uneventful. Business class was nice and I admit that I did manage to get some sleep so all was good.

Landed in Hong Kong

After a 3 hour wait in Hong Kong, I finally boarded the flight to Bangkok. Interesting flight! The Emirates air hostess was from Sydney and seemed to like me because of my Aussie accent so she kept talking to me about travel, working in Europe etc. Her real job was insurance. She had joined Emirates to see a bit of the world before she had to get serious ith a financial career.

The plane was a lovely new A380 and I have to say that even economy was very spacious and nearly as comfortable as BA business class had been. It helped that the flight was also quite empty.

Initially I had the entire aisle to myself but a guy came and sat in the window seat and was talking to me. He was from Mauritias and was a trauma surgeon working in a hospital in mainland China. He was on his way home for the first time in 2 years. He’d been studying to become a Neuro Surgeon and was telling me about some of his patients and the operations he had done. In particular a story about an 11 year old boy who had lost 2 fingers in an industrial accident. The boy could still feel his fingers even though they werent there because the nerves were too close to the skin and the brain knew that those nerves were meant for the fingers he no longer had.

Hong Kong Airport

The surgeon (I never did learn his name) was thinking about moving back to Mauritias, trying to affiliate himself with a hotel and open a medical tourism facility. His idea was that surgery would be done in a hospital and that all recuperation would be at the hotel where they would be provided with nurse, cleaner and a tour guide! So one day if you go to Mauritias for a Medical Holiday, the surgeon may well be the guy I sat next to on the plane.

Final arrival into Bangkok was annoying to say the least. I managed to end up in the slowest immigration queue ever and then had to rescue my bag before some woman tried to take off with it. Noice!

Hotel is fairly average (ok… very average) and there is a mozzie in my room so I am covered in DEET. Since it is now 6:25am I may go find some breakfast. Tonight sees me on an overnight train to Chiang Mai and I may get some internet to post this eventually rather than leaving it on my laptop 🙂

See ya later

KC