> Well honestly, I had not intended to change either my sex or name, but it was
> kinda forced upon me ….
>
> I check in for a Gulf Air flight from Bangkok to Bahrein… yes I know that
> you didn’t see this coming, but neither did I til about 2 days beforehand,
> which just shows you never know what will happen next….
>
> I stand at the counter, with my newly issued ticket in hand and pass it and
> my passport over to a young man, whom I soon realised was possibly on his
> first day on the job, as he had a minder with him, a nice looking woman, who
> coached him through the various check in entries required by a computer
> system to generate (= issue) a boarding card. To those of you who are
> innocent of these mysteries, you have to go through a sometimes involved
> pattern just to get a card to shoot out of a hole, and if you dont get it all
> 100% right, then it wont deliver, but the night was young and there was no
> rush, so I smiled nicely and said take your time and his helper helped him,
> while he generally screwed things up and my seat request made for more
> confusion and the fact that I wasn’t checking any baggage and had only a
> small carry-on made for greater inquiries, as he had obviously been warned
> about people turning up with huge amounts of baggage and the problems that
> then came from too many bits of baggage and here was I with NONE.
>
> Anyway after a while, I finally was sent on my way and went off and bought my
> 500 Baht Departure Tax stamp from a
machine. You receive a nice little piece of paper which says Thailand
> Departure Tax on it just to prove it and then you hand it to a girl. Now
> this is the job you will really want … you have a nice uniform and stand outside
> the entry to immigration and when someone thrusts this piece of paper at you,
> you have a two hole punch in your hand and punch a hole – END OF JOB. It
> was kinda difficult to keep a straight face when my hole puncher was wearing
> a badge that said TRAINEE … gimme a break – you punch a hole – that’s IT
> and here she was in Training …. perhaps there are advanced level exams in
> punching holes or it has to be in a certain place, but looking at some
> previous ones I found scrunched up in a pocket, the placing of the hole seems
> to be random.
>
> Anyway I goes through immigration, where your boarding card is stamped all
> over by a severe looking lady and you are technically a non-person – still in
> Thailand but officially elsewhere. G. Orwell would have liked it I’m sure.
>
> So I walks down to the gate and am twiddling my thumbs, watching the planes
> like airline people do and I takes out my boarding card to check the dep time
> and suddenly IT LEAPS OUT AT ME … I am NOT ME any more … I am Mrs
> Amarinda Ghosh. Well, it came as quite a shock I can tell you… In fact,
> Gosh I said… My youth and his minder had between them managed to screw
> things up and misidentify me for someone else and now I am in the eyes of
> Gulf Air Mrs Ghosh. For a moment I was tempted to let it ride, but I knew
> there would be tears before bedtime (and prolly departure too) if I tried to
> pretend I had joined the Ghosh family and changed sex all at once … one
> thing at a time please.
>
> So I goes up the desk at the gate, with passport in hand as a proof of
> being someone else and show it to the young lad there. He is greatly
> confused. Stares at the boarding card and then the passport and then my
> ticket and then me, in various permutations, not knowing quite who to
> believe.. Has Mrs Ghosh suddenly changed her name and sex and is now Mr
> Gibson ??? It is all immediately getting confusing and we have only just
> started….. He calls on the radio in Thai … and eventuallee two girls
> arrive, one of whom is in the Gulf uniform. I try to explain that I think the
> lad at the counter misidentified me in the system and probably the
> aforementioned Mrs Ghosh may possibly be trying to check in right now and
> they are wondering why she is checking in a second time, when the computer
> system, which cannot be wrong, already says she is here. It was all a bit
> like dealing with a selection of Manuels from Fawlty Towers and if you cudda
> substituted some Thai accents with Spanish, then we wudda been there. Lots
> of talking on radios and then the phone and more people all staring at me and
> then the boarding card and then the screen and then me again, as if I had
> engineered the whole scenario. I was beginning to think it would be easier
> just to confess to really being Mrs Ghosh and just slinking away…..In the
> end the penny drops and much bashing around of computer keys and finally I am
> allowed to become moi again. A close shave.
>
> So I jumps on the Gulf Air Airbus 340 which has come from Hong Kong and will
> continue now to Bahrein. I am of course convinced that I shall be one of
> only a handful of people on the plane and there again, how wrong can you be.
> It is heaving with people, mainly from HK and on their way to Europe, as when
> we get off in BAH 7 hours later, the masses all follow the Connections signs
> and about 10 of us the Bahrein one.
>
> Of course, in flight, I am soon chatting to the multi ethnic crew – nice girls from
> Croatia and New Zealand and Ireland for starters, plus Egyptians and even
> Bahreinis too. I am before long inside the curtains around the galley,
> seated on an upturned barbox and having a good crew chat with them … well
> it makes seven hours go quite fast and we had a good time, specially the
> Croatian one who was very funny and had a fund of stories from her aunt who
> has been flying there for some 35 years and obviously had some pretty hair
> rasing tales to pass along to her niece.
>
> So we lands in BAH and its suddenly the coolest place Ive been in the last 4
> weeks. And there is a man from an hotel with my name on a board and in a
> flash I am off to his pad, all glitter in the lobby and bare in the room and
> fall happily into bed, as the last night had been on a plane from Colombo to
> Bangkok and here I was halfway through the next one and my poor old body was
> beginning to show the cracks.
>
> I’m going to BAH cos I’ve been set up for an interview to have a sort of
> temporary but possibly longer job with DHL, the overnight and mainly
> international package people. It’s all too long and boring to relate here,
> but in a nutshell they have a big Gulf base in BAH and now there’s a war on,
> all those boys at the front are being sent letters and care parcels from the
> rellies back home and the system is getting swamped. Main problem it seems
> is the USPostal Service, which is delaying things and delivering it all late
> to DHL in JFK, who then are getting the blame for slow delivery at the other
> end. So something has to be done and they want a new czar to go in and take
> a look at the situation and an old BCAL friend of mine works for them in LON
> (and was before in BAH) and knew I was walking the streets, so he nominated
> me to the boss in BAH and next mo I’m off to talk to him. We had a nice chat
> and we shall see what transpires. And thus it’s possible I may have yet
> another career… we shall see. The boss is Kiwi, so I’m not dealing
> with an Arab or anything too unusual, just someone who probably lives and
> breathes rugger. And wudya believe it, it rains in BAH when I’m there and
> this is regarded as something v unusual, so I (and Mrs Ghosh) claim full
> resp. for it.
There is time afterwards for a quick orientation tour of the
> city … my 33 yr old driver is rolly poly and certainly will not be
> appearing soon on the cover of Men’s Health, but nevertheless it appears he
> is a regular Don Juan on the side and unasked for, I hear a litany of his
> female conquests that leaves me quite exhausted. We should be playing
> excerpts from Don Giovanni in the background. Seems Iranian girls are just
> arriving in droves asking for ‘it’ and the Kuwaitis are not far behind and
> the poor man is being run ragged in his attempts to foster good international
> relations. You would never have guessed to look at him and it did make me
> feel those Iranians must be kinda desperate cases !
>
> I liked the big hoarding advertising a watch with the slogan “Time for
> Prayer” – even Dubya the Dim couldn’t have thought that one up. Also a tent
> card on the table where we stop for some food, advertising some high powered
> ‘tonic’ drink has the line “Has positive effects on the powers of alertness
> during nocturnal activities” …. I think my driver may be needing same….
> We do finally manage to stop in a small souk, which is always far more my
> scene and I end up smelling like some all the perfumes of Araby freak, as he
> needed some new cologne, so we spent ages sniffing and testing on exposed
> skin … you wudda thought he was buying a house .. I just ended up very
> fragranced shall we say and was to remain so for the flight back to BKK.
> All I bought was a kinda loofah back scrubber which amused everyone greatly,
> as they felt I should have shall we say a posher souvenir. So back to the
> airport and again I am regarded as suspicious as I have only a small carry on
> and no monster bedrolls or tin trunks. Just hope Mrs Ghosh isn’t there too…
>
> I jump back on Gulf Air to Abu Dhabi, which v nicely is a plane that has come
> from London and the first thing I see is an pristine copy of The Times and
> then change to the big plane back to BKK . Awful terminal as totally hard
> surfaces and a circular building so all sounds just bouncing off the walls
> and at 0100 it is heaving with people of all sorts of shapes and sizes and
> ethnicities and I would dearly love to go around and ask the old crones in
> total black squatting on the floor just where they came from and where they
> are going and WHY ? This time a much more Arab crew – all guys in the back
> and they are fast with the meals and feed me some gin, which brings me back
> to life and I am kept awake by a gang of Algerians (!) playing cards behind
> me and then a gang of Chinese seem to be having a shouting competition and we
> whizz through the night and there is BKK again in the steamy morning light.
> That’s twice in 4 days Ive been there for the dawn, and as far as my body is
> concerned, that’s twice too many.
>
> And I fall into bed. Later a walk to get some air (though in the foetid
> steaminess and pollution of Bangkok, that is impossible). And talking about
> walking, Bangkok is without a doubt the winner in the worst sidewalks of the
> world competition – the place is a disaster, being totally broken up and down
> and great yawning chasms where innocent pedestrians tumble and are never seen
> again. So I take a pew at the Erewan Shrine, which is always good for
> people watching. If you can imagine a golden Buddha parked on a corner of
> Piccadilly Circus or Times Sq, traffic pounding around and then the locals
> dropping in to light some incense and the best thing, the singing dancers,
> all dressed in ancient glitter Thai costume – kinda The King and I, but all
> in VERY slow motion and some painful monotone singing, but I can sit for
> hours and just watch. You can pay to have them sing some religious ditty
> just for you, as scraps of paper were being passed up and then the lead girl
> says the name of the person they were singing for and off they go in their
> hypnotic slow motion girations. It’s all so slow that sometimes they look
> like they might just stop in mid wail, toes and fingers turned up. The band
> is live too, though hardly up to Lawrence Welk, as they play very gently and
> one tiny very whizzened old guy just bangs two mini cymbals together for
> hours on end. I could do that.
>
> I was there for a shift change (honest), so the new afternoon gang was
> sitting around, chatting and eating and talking on their cellphones and all
> dressed up and heavily made up and very surreal it was. Meanwhile the
> locals are doing their praying oblivious to camera touting tourists and
> draping the shrine with garlands and lighting candles, which you soon realise
> if you watch long enough that the cleaners come along pronto and just toss
> into huge yellow plastic rubbish bins.. your flowers don’t get to last too
> long, while outside the ladies what makes the garlands etc are beavering away
> making more.
>
> And back at the hotel, the newly opened Conrad and all v nice thank you,
> where they have installed me on the Exec Floor, I manage to hit the free
> cocktails and nibbles and meet a luvly French girl called Julie who is
> running the place and we parlez vous and she says nice things about my accent
> and is convulsed when I say that thanks to Mel Gibson, the French can now
> pronounce my name (as before you were always Jeebson) and eat enough fancy
> nibbles and sushi so that I dont need supper and at 8 pm I am out cold.
>
> So that next morning (ie this morning as I type) I can get up at 0400, as the
> UA’s one and only flight ex BKK is at 0700 and they insist they we all get
> there early to go through the security routine, so up and away I am and I
> flies to Tokyo and now on the final stretch home to JFK.
>
> Going back a bit, I have to confess that I was remiss in my Duty Free
> shopping in BAH, which always had a lot and now has even more. If I cudda
> carried it, I wud have brought you all back something totally unique from a
> Duty Free shop … how about a 5 KILO plastic bag of OMO detergent ????????
> What more joy could this bring???? – certainly more than any amount of
> perfumes or booze…..I asked the young sales guy who buys this and he
> muttered rather darkly “Indians”. Perhaps the Mrs Ghosh’s of this world
> like to do a bit of in-flight dhobi and what better place than a plane, with
> it’s abundant supplies of water and great drying facilities … just hang yr
> undies from the overhead bins and they will be dry in a flash. And if you
> had bought that iron in the Duty Free shop, well you cudda had them all
> nicely flattened by the time you reach Bombay. (Great sales hint to Airbus
> here – who needs downstairs lounges etc etc in their projected great big
> plane – what we need is a full scale laundromat… and perhaps dry cleaning
> too for those long sectors.)
>
> All right enough already….
>
> Tim (and of course Mrs. Ghosh likes to be remembered to you all….wherever
> she is….I worry about her sometimes).
timothyvalentinestravels 