Wednesday, November 3, 2010
(2:30pm on Wednesday) We’re sitting at Mandalay airport. Our flight to Tachileik connected here and just as the plane was getting ready to taxi, it shut down. Some type of minor technical problem. So we’ve deplaned and are now waiting, maybe 30 minutes to an hour in the airport. This reminds me strangely of the flight my dad and I had from Hangzhou to Guilin, although this time, the stop was on the itinerary. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens because we are due to cross the border into Thailand and it closes at 6pm.
This morning I slept until 8am and grabbed breakfast before taking a power walk around Nyaungsshwe. It felt great to get moving a bit as we’ve been doing so much sitting on the tour. On our way to Heho airport we stopped at the Shwe Yan Paya monastery, built in the 1800s and known for the beautiful glass mosaics.
(2:50pm) OMG! Our flight was just canceled. I can’t believe this. This really screws us p for the next few days. This sucks. J.P. now has to try to figure out what’s going to happen. This is ridiculous. We had such a tight schedule and the next flight isn’t until the same time tomorrow. I don’t see how this is going to work now. The plan for today was to cross the border into Thailand and stay overnight and get on the slow boat to Laos. Well, there is a lot of talk going on right now, so we’ll see what happens.
(4:00pm) We’ve arrived at Hotel Mandalay but apparently they don’t know about our booking, so we aren’t sure if we are actually spending the night here. The hotel looks pretty nice; I hope we don’t have to change.
(4:30pm) Success! We’ve managed to get rooms at Hotel Mandalay. Thank you Yangon airways. Our flight is supposed to be at 12:30pm tomorrow and I imagine we’ll have to leave for the airport around 9am. Don’t know which part of the city we’re in, but I’m not that interested in exploring more of Mandalay. Ros and I are just going to relax in the room until dinner at 7pm.
(8:45pm) Our wonderful tour leader J.P. secured us dinner at the hotel too. Once again, thank you Yangon Airways, although I would have preferred spending the night in Thailand as planned. We had a huge Chinese meal with a large variety of chicken, pork and vegetable dishes. I figured I might as well have a Myanmar beer before we leave the country. Turns out our flight is now at 7:55am, so we’ll be leaving the hotel at 5:30am. I honestly can’t understand how they can change things so quickly. Although it did seem like there were a lot of pissed off locals and I’m not sure what type of accommodation they were given. We all felt guilty when a family (including a pregnant woman) was kicked out of the Yangon airways mini-bus to transfer us to the hotel. Hopefully they got out of the airport ok.
GAP originally had us losing a day in Luang Prabang (which would have meant spending only 15 hours or so in the city) but J.P. asked them to remove the night in Vang Vieng instead. So now we’ll have a long day transferring to Vientiane and skip out on Vang Vieng altogether. Not only that, we’ll arrive in Vientiane late afternoon and have an early flight to Siem Reap. It’s not ideal but what choice do we have. At least we’re getting our time in Luang Prabang and the boat trip on the Mekong. An unexpected change of plans; we’re all trying to go with the flow. Hopefully we’ll be in Thailand tomorrow afternoon. Until then…
Erica:
ReplyDeleteWhen do you come home to the states? Katie will be in San Francisco for New Year's Eve.
Barb McKenzie