From There to Here
You know those old black and white movies where a long journey is depicted by drawing lines on a map between major world cities as a proxy for the actual flights taken? That's how I felt getting to here. From San Francisco, we flew 14 hours to Hong Kong. We walked from one end of the HK airport to the other. We passed gates with destinations such as Addis Ababa, Milan, Port Morseby and Dubai. If you can find all of those cities on the map, then I tip my cap to you. From HK, we flew to Bangkok. The highlight of that leg was seeing myself on TV. Cathay Pacific has video entertainment on board and one of the programs featured highlights from the Beijing Olympics. During the clip of the USA v. Spain men's basketball gold medal game, I caught a glance of myself sitting on a bench taking pictures. What a surprise!
From Bangkok we flew to Paro, Bhutan. However, there was a quick layover that was not on our itinerary. We stopped in Dhaka. Where is Dhaka? I didn't know for sure either. Our approach to the landing strip did offer some clues. It was marshy, low-lying land. The little, two-story buildings were densely packed together. My guess? Bangladesh with India being a second choice. Sure enough it was Bangladesh. Had to confirm it with the flight attendant. I felt like such a typical, geography-illiterate American asking such a dumb question. For shame. At least there is the upside of saying I was once in Bangladesh for an hour. From Dhaka, we landed in Paro which has one of the most dangerous airport landing strips in the world. We had to dodge mountain sides and our final approach included a hard right turn at about 3,000 feet and a path that seemed to scrap pine trees with our wings. Since I'm writing this we obviously landed safely. Our car ride from Paro to Thimphu was about an hour long and the road was lined with school children waving flags to welcome the VIP visitors who were coming for the King's coronation. Thirty-four hours after leaving our apartment in San Francisco we finally unzipped our luggage.
From Bangkok we flew to Paro, Bhutan. However, there was a quick layover that was not on our itinerary. We stopped in Dhaka. Where is Dhaka? I didn't know for sure either. Our approach to the landing strip did offer some clues. It was marshy, low-lying land. The little, two-story buildings were densely packed together. My guess? Bangladesh with India being a second choice. Sure enough it was Bangladesh. Had to confirm it with the flight attendant. I felt like such a typical, geography-illiterate American asking such a dumb question. For shame. At least there is the upside of saying I was once in Bangladesh for an hour. From Dhaka, we landed in Paro which has one of the most dangerous airport landing strips in the world. We had to dodge mountain sides and our final approach included a hard right turn at about 3,000 feet and a path that seemed to scrap pine trees with our wings. Since I'm writing this we obviously landed safely. Our car ride from Paro to Thimphu was about an hour long and the road was lined with school children waving flags to welcome the VIP visitors who were coming for the King's coronation. Thirty-four hours after leaving our apartment in San Francisco we finally unzipped our luggage.
posted by huja at 7:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home