The hotel room Don reserved for me.
His favorite noodle shop.
I arrived in Bangkok at 11pm on November 8. It took me a while (maybe a little fatigue after traveling 26 hours?) to explain that I was looking for a bus that would go near My House Hotel which was where I was meeting Don. When asking the ever-so-helpful Thais at the Information Kiosk where My Home Hotel was, they thought I was trying to get to "my home" rather than a hotel - so much for my rusty Thai! Unbeknownst to me, Don had planned to welcome me at the airport with a necklace of lotus blossums, transport me to the hotel where he had Bia Chaang and cheese in the fridge in the room he'd reserved for me. But...he had the date wrong. His look of shocked surprise when I showed up at the hotel around midnight, 24 hours "early", was priceless. I spent a few days with him while he showed me around the neighborhood near his hotel and SkyTrain stop. Don's favorite "restaurant", actually a small, permanent food stall in inner city Bangkok where we dined one evening.
The only bug in the lengthy travel experience was in Beijing Airport which lacked good signage or any assistance, courteous or otherwise. It took over two hours to get from my arrival gate to my new departure gate due to international transfer problems. Typically, you "should" be able to breeze through to International Departure Transfer. After being told I did not need to complete special arrival and departure documents because I was simply transferring, I was turned away at both Immigration and Customs and told to go find (?) forms to complete. After doing so and handing them to the proper official, they were promptly and unceremoniously dropped into an "out" box without a glance. 
Eventually I found the enormous departure terminal and lined up with other departees who were checking in with all their baggage simply for me to get a boarding pass. The Thais, of course, at the ticket counter were very helpful. . . . NOTE: Be forewarned if you are traveling with codeshare partners on your airline, you will NOT be given boarding passes for those foreign airlines when you check in at your departure airport. This happened last year with Delta (and AirFrance) and I thought it was a fluke but it is not. It can be difficult to find the transfer desk. In Beijing there was none for Thai Air which I was transferring to. 
This photo is of the orchid corsage, the International Herald Tribune and the chocolate truffle - oh, I guess I ate that - that was given to each passenger on leaving Thai Airways' plane in Bangkok. Can you imagine that kind of service on one of our airlines?Flying is the only time when responsible adults get to sit down, read, watch films, sleep a bit, and have meals brought continuously, with free alcohol on tap even in the morning. And there is someone there whose it is to attend to your comforts and needs. It’s a time to let go and let somebody else take charge. --
Travel, for too long, has been trivialized by the promoters of popular tours; it deserves better. It is an essential perquisite for a civilized life, perhaps the most effective tool for reducing foolish national pride and promoting a world view. – Arthur Frommer
