Alright, so this is a little silly since we never left the airport on our way from South Africa to Beijing, China.  However, the travel time was a good chunk of our trip and is still quite memorable in part because of the length and in part because we have no pictures. (Sounds ironic, huh?)

We left South Africa many days after we had planned on leaving.  Our travel changes only included the times of the tickets and not the route.  So, our first hop dropped us back in to the Johannesburg airport.  We didn't spend much time there and I hardly remember it. 

Not long after, we were off on a decent length flight to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.  Here, we spent about 12 hours waiting for our next flight.  We didn't have to leave the secure section of the airport and we decided not to.  As it turns out, this was in the middle of the day and Ramadan had just started.  Our guide books told us that the most likely place to find food would be in the Chinatown section.  Well, see, we were headed off to China anyway, so we decided to go get some slept -- we had already been up a long time. 

There was a transit hotel in the security section that rented by the hour, although mostly in four hour blocks.  I forget if we stayed four or six hours, but it went very fast and only marginally helped our fatigue -- but we did get to shower, which was nice. 

After that, we headed out in to the great KLIA which, like any modern airport, is basically a shopping mall.  This proved to be entertaining so we went around looking at things and grabbed a couple of trinkets and ended up with some of the local money.

Our next flight was quite short since it was just going to Thailand.  We landed and proceeded to have the next eight hours to wonder around the Bangkok airport.  This was not quite as good of an experience as KLIA since we had to exit security, pay the taxes, etc.  Then, we couldn't check in right away so we had to make do for a couple of hours on the external section of the airport, which didn't have quite so many shops to kill some time.  However, we saw plenty of the military presence we had heard about.

The coup, as it turned out, was mostly non-violent and we probably would have been fine had we not changed our plans.  However, there were a few issues that made us very glad we did change our plans.  First, banks and ATM's were closed the first few days, so money would have been a problem.  Many other shops and sights were also closed.  Finally, the weather was absolutely terrible the whole time we would have been there.  We didn't leave the airport because the middle of the airport had a very large enclosed courtyard where we could see the massive amounts of wind and rain, even though it was protected on all sides by a many-story building.

Our next flight to Beijing was a bit longer, at over five hours, but that wasn't the interesting part.  This turned out to be what felt like a very budget flight.  The plane was noticeably old and hadn't been retrofitted with new seats or signage.  It still had ash trays on the seats and other signs.  This was also a flight between two non-English speaking countries and with a destination that is relatively rare for English speakers.  That didn't prevent them from speaking in English on the announcements, when there were some.  The rest of the flight was uneventful and we got some needed rest. 

I recall choosing the local breakfast rather than the western breakfast that didn't look all that good.  As it turns out, it was this huge thing of rice porridge that was both quite good and very filling.  I say it was good mostly because I like rice and it can be spiced up some.  It was relatively bland, though, but after being in transit (including driving to the airport in South Africa) for over 40 hours, food was food.

We landed and had a decent drive in front of us to our hotel.  That's another story, though.

Posted by Shane on March 19, 2007 8:22 AM | Permalink