Southeast Asia 2008 Part I

Wednesday Dec. 3
Today was a very long day to say the least. Waking up at 6:10am on the 3rd in Ras Tanura and here it is 9:12pm on the 4th in Singapore AND Singapore is 4 hours ahead of Saudi. So if you do the math we have gone 30 plus hours with no real sleep. So as I sit here in our hotel in Singapore typing away, drinking a delicious local brew called Tiger Beer, the kids are bouncing off the walls from exhaustion and the adults are shot. We have to be up at 5am local time to get to the airport to catch an 8am flight to Ho Chi Minh City. Today was very cool. So many people and so many countries.
We were flying Sri Lankan Air and I cannot lie. I was a bit nervous. I was expecting a lot of chickens and goats in the aisles and a funky smell to rival Jack on an August day in Saudi. In the end I was pleasantly surprised. No wildlife and some seriously attentive flight attendants. In fact they kept waking us up when we wanted to sleep. In the end our total journey looked more like Saudi Arabia to Bahrain to Qatar to Sri Lanka to Singapore and on to Vietnam tomorrow. A little different then the below blog.
The Bahrain airport is the main hub for Gulf Air. The airport also services British Airways and some other European airlines. Sri Lankan Air is not one of their priorities. So when we saw that we were flying out of gate 34 I was a bit concerned. The nicer part of Bahrain’s airport has gates 1 through 20 something. Where was gate 34?? I should have known. In our part of the Middle East people from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh are mostly relegated to the grunt work positions and are therefore looked down upon by the Arab world. It is not uncommon late in the afternoon as work lets out to see school bus loads of these fellas being driven from the various work sites to their living quarters. Their work is hard and they don’t get much respect. They have left their wives and kids to come to Saudi to try and make life better for their families by putting themselves in what most would consider abhorrent conditions. In the end they will always offer you a smile and a wave and for that they have gained my total respect. Anywho, we were looking to fly the airline that would be carrying a lot of these guys home for their once every three year vacation (most work seven days a week). So of course I was not surprised that as we followed the signs for gate 34 we found ourselves on the way to the basement of the airport. I am use to the bright lights and crackin’ lackin’ duty free shop of the “European” section of the airport. This was quite different. All the duct work exposed. Crammed seating. The duty free was a kiosk. And the kicker was when I went into the bathroom there were a minimum of three men cleaning their feet in the sinks. Ewwww. Now those of you in the know would say they might have been Muslim getting ready to pray. Cleaning your feet is part of the deal. These guys were Hindu. They had the red or white dots on their foreheads. As an aside I am teaching this cute little Indian kid named Vagul. He is all of two and a half feet tall. One night he showed up for baseball practice with a white dot on his head. I asked him what it was. His answer was very cool. “I don’t know. My mom puts it there. It is a God thingy.” In a thick Indian accent. But I digress again. So there we were sitting with the “commoners”. As bad as I thought things could be they ended up going very well. We boarded the flight and were off. Anna refused to go to sleep until 3:15am but once she did she was out for the rest of the trip.
Seven hours after departing Bahrain airport and stopping for an hour in Doha we arrived in Colombo Sri Lanka. Did not see much. A lot of guys with big guns. Loads of beautiful palm trees and surprisingly enough, Kenny G’s Christmas album pumping through the sound system. Weird. We had a quick hour layover in Sri Lanka and then it was off to Singapore on an almost empty flight. We were all exhausted and got to spread out and lay across four seats to sleep. It was great. We arrived in Singapore at 2ish this afternoon. It was pouring rain. I mean pouring. As we neared touchdown in the torrental downpour I questioned the caliber of pilots Sri Lankan Air was capable of recruiting. But we made it to the land of illegal chewing gum and canings and had a great time this evening. But that is for my next blog. I am off to bed as we have to get up reeeeeaaaaal early tomorrow.