It felt good to be back in the arms of Pan Am First Class Standby for the flight to Bangkok. We landed in Delhi to refuel — sat on the tarmac while an Indian lady with downcast eyes tidied the cabin and swept around our feet with a whisk — and took off again without exiting the plane — our first trip to the subcontinent!
Bangkok was a shock for three reasons — the press of people, the smells and the fact that the city seemed to be struggling to stay above water. I’d thought that two years in the Solomons would have accustomed us to living in the “third world”, but a couple of hundred thousand Solomon Islanders were spread over 11,000 square miles of ocean. Here four and a half million people were jammed into one city.
We visited the Grand Palace and wondered at ornate temples like Wat Phra Kaew and Wat Arun. I lost my appetite wandering through the markets with Heather, looking squeamishly at the food stalls, and found that a snake’s embrace is unexpectedly muscular.
We took a tuktuk ride, barely moving at times because the traffic was so dense, and ate Mongolian Barbecue — neither Mongolian nor barbecue — seated at a street side table, overwhelmed by the traffic noise and fumes.
We took longtail boat tours up the khlongs, choked with weed, and along the Chao Phraya River, pulled up to a water market and wondered what happened when the tide came in.
It took a holiday in Bali with Heather and a brief work trip to Java for Jerry Breekveldt before I really felt at home in South East Asia.
Meanwhile I suddenly felt homesick.
I’d signed on for another year in the Solomons, and I wanted to go home first — to see our parents, and our kids, who’d been staying with them. And to see familiar country and swim in the sea at Whatuwhiwhi, where the water was cool and refreshing, and you needn’t worry about coral sores if you swam with broken skin.
A few days of family and fresh water and I’d be OK to get back to Tulagi.