International Again

I’m in airport no-man’s land where the food is expensive and the lights fluorescent. Two years and eleven days since I passed through an eerily quiet Suvarnabuhmi airport on my way to Chiang Mai, just as the pandemic slid international travel into deep freeze, I am back again.

An hour and fifteen minutes away, Cambodia awaits.

I’ve not been writing this week; instead, dashing about trying to remember all the things a person is supposed to do to cross an international border. I may be a little rusty, but now there are also lashings of covid hoops to jump through too.

Add to that the excitement of having your carry-on x-rayed at least three times because it’s full of oil filters, heat shields, fuel filters and spark plug caps, and I remember why I used to prefer to ride across borders on motorcycles instead.

Unfortunately that’s still impossible – the land borders around here remain resolutely closed – but that’s no reason not to visit your motorcycle.

These days the only flights to Phnom Penh leave in the early morning which means that my connecting flight from Chiang Mai was last night, and I’ve just spent a delicious twelve hours camping out in the airport. It’s all good – I’ve got coffee – although there’s a group of at least 100 Chinese travelers in full HazMat suits beside me. Do they know something I don’t?

Never mind; my motorcycle awaits.