We are somewhere over Turkmanestan en route to Thailand on a half empty Thai Airways flight, and so far it’s been pretty comfortable except for the malodorous Swiss obesity in the seat in front of me who likes to sleep with one chunky wing upraised, the better to air his left armpit. Not that it doesn’t need airing, mind you, but perhaps he might have chosen to do it al fresco, like the Matterhorn, perhaps. Thai Airways is one of that growing number of airlines that reserves its exit rows not for those of us with long legs but for people they call Gold Star members, tiny creatures whose stockinged feet barely brush the floor. On the other hand we’ve got a row of four seats to ourselves: ourselves and the occasional whiff from Herr Schweitzerman up in front. We got completely screwed up at the Zurich airport when they declared that our check-in luggage was 20 kilos overweight. Instead of transferring those kilos (most of it gifts for our Thai hosts and hostesses) to our carry-on bags we idiotically sent it to Thailand parcel post for an ungodly amount of money and without the slightest confidence that we will ever see it again. We needed a calm brain like one of our children’s to figure this out before we laid our money down. But then the hotel in Zurich did not charge us for a double room, so all we’ve done is take those savings and spent them on freight, which brings us out to about even. We will land in Bangkok at about 5:30, trudge through customs, get taken in more ways than one by a cab driver to the Swiss Lodge, and beg them to let us into our room. Failing that, we will spend a few bleary hours in a coffee shop somewhere, or stumbling through the streets, adjusting to the blossoming melée of an early Friday morning in Bangkok.
Our fellow passengers are mostly Swiss, including several muscle-bound gays for whom Bangkok has become a congenial destination. Many of the married couples look to be recently retired and on tour with a very glossy Thai guide who circulates among them with his purse, speaking a lilting Switzer Deutsch and fetching them drinks with a flourish. The stewardesses are graceful, aristocratic looking girls in silk outfits with long necks upon which their heads seem almost to wobble as they mince up and down the aisles, passing out hot towels, mixed nuts, entrées, brandy, and glass after glass of juice and water. They are so delicate-looking and elegant that I think we with our wide backsides and rumpled clothes should be serving them, or more appropriately, digging potatos and ditches..
It’s strange, though, how in mid flight the familiarity of a wide-body jet takes a little of the adventurous feeling out of travel, as if we were taking a shuttered (and very slow) monorail from one Disneyland exhibit to another. But I anticipate that as we step off the plane and get hit by the first blast of hot, humid air, carrying with it the unadulterated smell of teeming human habitation, and submit to customs, and fumble with the currency, and puzzle over the signage, and pass among crowds of slender Thais and ride past the glossy, prehistoric-seeming vegetation of palms and banana trees – that Swiss Lodge or no Swiss Lodge, Switzerland itself will seem farther away even than it actually is.