Thursday, August 25, 2016

June 14-18, 2015: Calcutta to Bangkok to Saipan

I was up about 6 on the morning of the 14th in Calcutta.  I went out to the street in front of my hotel for an egg and bread breakfast cooked by a vendor, one of several, right on the sidewalk.  After breakfast I took a short walk under a bright sun and a blue sky.  About 7:30 I left on a taxi to the airport through the relatively light traffic of a Sunday morning. 

My flight to Bangkok, on IndiGo at a cost of $123, took off at 11.  The sky was too hazy and cloudy to see much from the plane.  We landed in Bangkok about 3 after a two and a half hour flight.  From the airport I took the metro and then a taxi to the hotel in the Banglamphu neighborhood near the Chao Phraya River where I usually stay in Bangkok.  Rain started to fall as I arrived at the hotel.  I ate delicious Pad Thai for dinner about 5:30 from one of the many outdoor vendors in the neighborhood.  The rain stopped, though the air was still very humid.  I walked to Khao San Road and back.  Considerably fewer foreign tourists were on the streets than when I had been here the previous November.

I left the hotel about 7 the next morning and took the Chao Phraya river boat and then the metro to Bumrungrad Hospital for my annual physical and other medical and dental appointments.  Leaving the hospital, I walked north to a canal and took a canal boat west to the end of the line, and then walked from there back to my hotel. 

The next morning about 10 I hired a taxi to take me back to Bumrungrad for my ten year colonoscopy.  I took a taxi back to my hotel about 7 and then a van to the airport at 9. 

My Air China flight to Beijing, the first of three flights back to Saipan, left at 1:40 in the morning.  I slept on the flight, which arrived in Beijing just after 7 on a sunny morning.  It took me until 9 to sort out the transfer to my next flights.  I had hoped to find the NBA finals game on television somewhere, but didn't.  The airport had few places to eat, too.  I had expected the services at Beijing's modern airport to be more extensive.  It didn't seem very busy, either.  I had a long layover and spent the day reading newspapers and a book.  Rain fell in the afternoon and then the sky cleared. 

My Asiana flight to Incheon in Korea left at 4:15 in the afternoon, flying mostly over the sea.  It arrived at 6:45 and I left at 9:15 on another Asiana flight, a 747 full of Korean tourists, to Saipan.  We encountered lots of turbulence over southern South Korea and over the island of Kyushu in Japan. 

The plane landed in Saipan at 2 in the morning on the 18th.  My car was waiting at the airport and I drove home , arriving before 3 and going to bed shortly after. 

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