FINALLY! home.

warning: skip the next paragraph if you don't want to have to read a long incoherent rant.

The flight was delayed for 6.5h. At 11am I received a message from Air Asia (though apparently not everyone did; maybe they didn't provide their mobile numbers) telling me the 2.45 flight has been 're-timed' to 7.05pm. I was already on the train to the airport by that time, as the trains leave bkk at 11.15 and 11.45, and the next ones were at 2+pm, which would have been way too late for my flight. And so it transpired that I reached the airport at 12nn, then found out from the counter that the flight has now been delayed till 9.15pm! Argh! what was I going to do till then? If only I had not gone to Ayutheya and Bang Pa-in already: they would have made excellent daytrips, but then I figured I'd better not stray from the airport in case there were any changes.. anyone knows if there are any claims or something I can get for the delay? Cos instead of reaching senai at 6pm and taking public transport all the way home I got there at 12.45am today instead. Not to mention food and basically everything is expensive at the airport and they only gave us a snack voucher worth 70B (about enough for small fries and small soft drink, or a medium coffee), which I had to go up and ask for at about 3pm when I went to the counter again to make sure. And when I asked: can I just check in first or leave my baggage they simply told me to go to the airport service, which charges 90B per piece. Lucky I only had one backpack and my slingbag... grr.. they could have handled it better. I don't think my expectations are that high, esp considering what I paid for the ticket...

At JB, there was still, thankfully, a free shuttle to the city lounge, but beyond that, its taxi all the way. In the end transportation home from the airport cost me more than the flight. And I only reached home at 3am.

good things, however, did come out of this whole shebang:

1) The view of Bangkok and Malaysia at night. And flying at night. Really beautiful. The street lighting is orange while the houses/buildings use white light, so its looks like a sea of fire flowing through a field of diamonds. The transportation network stands out like a gorgeous version of the diagrams we've studied in geography or in widodo's classes. It's amazing how the darkness makes the city so much more enticing than it is in the day. Or rather, how the darkness makes the lights so beautiful. And when we fly above the sea of clouds to the clear sky above the stars are of course brilliant in their multitudes. And seeing the airport at night is nice too, esp when the spotlights of the airport are juxupositioned against a plane on the horizon and the fog...

2) at the check-in queue a nice Thai girl started talking to me. So now I had a companion for the flight. She's in the construction industry but apparently goes on short holidays in the region a lot. She also informed me that hair re-bonding is really cheap in Bangkok (abt a quarter of what they quoted me here, which is $110-140), and asked why I didn't do it there. I didn't know! Nobody told me... =(

3) I didn't have much ringget or sing dollars w me, so in an attempt to save money, I talked to other people on the shuttle and managed to get a group of 4 together: a japanese boy studying public finance who had to catch a flight home from changi at 6am, an indian australian who had friends here and who was really useful with sorting out the splitting of the taxi fares cos he's an accountant, and a filipino studying tourism here. It was nice chatting with them on the way back, finding out more about each other's countries... and laughing about trying to understand Thai English and their obmission of all 's's in their speech....

and I dare say I'm very familiar with Don Muang Bangkok International Airport by now. Have visited almost every toilet in there too.