Some days it's better to stay in bed . . .

Unfortunately, when those days coincide with an international flight, trouble is bound to strike. But maybe it was for the best after all!!

So I've spent a couple of days hanging out in Bangkok, picked up some stuff I wanted for my computer, eaten yummy spring rolls and black sticky rice at May Kaidees vego restaurant, freaked out a little bit about how schmick Koh San Road has become; everything paved, new, even a new Starbucks aggrhhh. I wandered down to the flower market, one of my favourite places, and then over to Wat Po, my very favourite place, to chill out and get the best massage ever. When the guy tells me to turn over I realise to my embarrassment that I'm drooling over the pillow. Oops!

So all this is good until it comes time to leave on Sunday. I run out of the hotel quickly before leaving to pick up a copy of Kid A (I've lost mine) and some special Thai toothpaste. VCan't get either. No biggie.

I get a taxi to the airport and everything is fine until he doesn't have any change and sends me off to wander around with my Four Bags to find some. No one is helpful and I'm not in the mood for this. For the first time I find myself getting short with people. Time for a reality check and decent swig of Emergency Essence. This is Thailand. At check in I can't get a window seat. I'm two and a half hours early and despite all pleas and protest the woman won't be moved. Damn Japanese package tourists must have checked in at first daylight or something. An interesting lesson methinks for Japan, me who always wings it at the last minute but is rarely late.

At the other end, I have 50 minutes to get out of the airport and onto a train to stay at a friend of my bosses that night. So I'm kinda stressed, not really wanting to be stuck in Osaka with too much stuff! At quarantine I get drilled about where I'm staying. At immigration, when I finally get there: 2 people for 200 foreigners, it gets worse. I accidentally wrote 3 months on my card, but only have a 35 day ticket. I also wrote teacher as occupation but am coming in on a tourist visa. Alarm bells start ringing (metaphorically) and I wonder if it would be worse if I had written my usual "international espionage" on my arrival card.

I get taken off to the immigration holding cell, the little white room where they leave you to sweat whilst working out what to do with you. By now I'm in panicky tears realising that missing the last train isn't the worst option. What if I get deported?

Finally, I get released after a big lecture and promises not to work illegally. Phew!

The courier place to send my bags has closed. I can't get change for the equivalent of a $100 note I have in yen and need to ring my boss. Eventually someone helps me spend a lot of money getting an expensive hotel next to the airport.

I ring Nettie, my boss, and discover she's been trying to get hold of me for the last week; apparently if I'd caught that train I would have been really screwed. Kathy, her friend, has gone back to Australia because her grandmother passed away.

It can only get better, I think, as I drink my first Asahi in Japan and settle into a hot bath.