Kathmandu
We wake far too early at the Bangkok airport hotel, with only our carry-ons to our name. Last night after arrival we waited for our luggage to make an appearance, but clearly they were too tired to get up. That or they're hanging out in LA with celebrity luggage and waiting for the next day's flight. (Depressing thought.) Theoretically, they were checked through all the way to Kathmandu, but our estimated chance of seeing them later today is roughly 10%. We asked the desk clerk when we checked in, and she gave us a thoroughly unconvincing nod of reassurance. We ponder raising our probability to 25%. We eat breakfast looking out over the runways, and ponder whether LA or Bangkok has more impressive pollution.A few hours of wandering through duty-free stores later, we board. We're back in Economy, a huge letdown after yesterday. The curry in-flight meal remains, however, so it's not entirely painful. There's some pain, however, as Steve was beaned by a carry-on during boarding. He keeps asking "Where's Nepal again?" and other concerning questions.
Our arrival in Kathmandu is typically chaotic. Passport control is slow, baggage claim slower. We wait for our duffels with little hope. Load after load arrives, including about 50 boxes of food labelled "Ambassador's Private Use". These are not checked at customs, of course, but the huge pile is watched curiously by tourists and locals alike. The crowd thins. Our hope dwindles. I angle for the lost-luggage line. Then, like the prodigal son, two familiar forms emerge. I plan my thank-you letter to United and move on through customs. The list of allowed imports is notably small and precise, so I opt to go through the red line. In some countries, if you don't declare excess film or electronics, they confiscate them when you leave. I like my Pilot, so I opt to declare. Unforunately, I can't. I stand in the red line for a bit, looking around hopefully, but eventually they wave me on through the green doors. Even there, there is no one to take my slip. There's a little pile of them on a chair.
When we were planning this trip, I raved to Steve about the joys of spending Christmas in a non-Christian country. "No one cares!", I told him, "It's just another day!" Don Muang airport in Bangkok has somewhat belied this theory -- lights and fake frost on the windows. Snowman decorations look strange in the tropics, and the fake frost effect is not helped by air conditioning condensation. The airport hotel left a stocking of cookies and oranges on our bed. Everyone at the airport wished us a Merry Christmas. But surely that's just Bangkok, a very international city, being considerate. Nepal will be different. Imagine my horror when subjected to the Nepali version of a Western Christmas dinner accompanied by a tremendously loud hotel band sight-reading Christmas music not originally composed for the Eastern scale. Surely that's one of the circles of hell. Is there a corner of our globe where Christmas has not invaded? Can one spend December 25th in happy ignorance of "Jingle Bells" and Frosty and little blinking lights? I must search farther afield. Still, we have our bags, and we're in Nepal. How cool is that?