A start of the trip is always exciting especially when it is to a place to where you have never been before as well as have spent so much time planning.
This trip is even more so as in some ways I’m going in honor of my mother who loved to travel. If she had been a bit younger, she would have loved to come on this trip with me.
As with most travel to foreign lands, the trip there and back is a long haul. From the time I left Seattle to when I arrived in Jakarta, I was “in-transit” for 45 hours.
Not all of it was spent at airports and on an airplane. When Candice and I found out that we couldn’t get our tickets early so we could sit in the Star Alliance lounge, she called the “AirTran” hotel to see if we could get their special room rate so that we could lounge in the hotel room. This way we could chill, shower (me) before boarding the plane for the long flight out to our first lay over, and basically catch up as well as be silly.
Since we were flying different airlines, I flew out two hours ahead of Candice. I then waited the two hours at the Jakarta airport for Candice.
My 16 hour flight took me to Bangkok, Thailand for my layover. As with most business/first class lounges when you travel internationally, there are showers available. That, in itself, is a delight after being cooped up in a plane for that long.
But the highlight of the this flight and layover was the Muslin ladies in the lounge. You couldn’t help but notice them. The older Muslin ladies had their mouths cover with a paper shield while the younger ones were listening to their music on the iPhones while laughing. These ladies were on their way home to Dubai.
They were gracious to allow me to take some pictures with them. And even one of the older ladies took off the paper shield to allow one of the other younger ladies to have their picture taken with me. Then they wanted me to try it on along with their scarf and have my picture taken so they could take it with them. While this was going on, all of us were laughing and exchanging a little bit of information of where we were from and where we were going.
A smile, a greeting, and/or a laugh is all it takes to make the tiniest of connection.
–pictures will have to on this one as I can’t upload from iPhone to here.