It took all of 5 minutes to go past security, immigration, and check in. Suddenly I found myself within a very pristine airport and to my total surprise, not a single restaurant, cafe, or gift shop in sight, not a single one in the entire airport!! I was famished, had more than 2 hours ahead of me, and luckily I had stuffed in a Clif bar and water bottle in my carry on before leaving the hotel. I asked several security agents where I could get something to eat and they said nowhere. With frustration serving no one, I told them I was hungry and I couldn't believe the airport didn't have a single place. About 20 minutes later I happened to notice on security guard sitting close by me and seeming to watch me... I made a mental note not to choose this time to organize files on my Mac. I decided to take another glance to judge what he was doing... as I did, he subtly called for my attention, looked around us, and opened his jacket to reveal a box of cookies. He gestured to give these to me... I was confused to say the least. I saw a price on the box and assumed he was trying to make a profit. It took me quite some time to put the pieces together... this was the security guard I had complained to, he had gone outside the airport to purchase this and was offering it to me, and obviously did not want the world to know about it. I tried to politely decline the box and opened it up to take a few biscuits out, whereupon he scooped it back into his jacket and disappeared and I distributed these to other hungry foreigners sitting by me. I smiled and with that, left the country into Bangkok.I sat next to a young Burmese boy traveling to
London, where he was to study for 5 years. He was from an international school in Rangoon and enjoyed basketball... actually, that seemed to be all he enjoyed! Every few minutes he would ask me how tall I was and what position I liked to play, or ask me what I thought of Steve Nash or Vince Carter. He showed me the pictures he had stored on his iPod of LeBron James' autobiography book cover or 50 Cent pointing a gun at the camera. Like everyone else he also knew all about Goenka meditation and actually his great grandfather had been close to Goenkaji at a young age. He told me all about his successful business practice and subsequent migraine headaches! In Bangkok I thankfully got through immigration and baggage easily and took the shuttle to my nearby hotel, the only one I was told within 20 minutes of the airport. More Rugby World Cup with Japan and Fiji squaring off and a very restless 4-5 hours of sleep. Up at 4.30 for morning meditation and shower and off to the airport. A great breakfast of Korean Bipip-Bop, bought some English tea and was wise to finish it ahead of time, and checked into my JAL flight back to Tokyo Narita, where I watched more bad movies and managed to stay awake for several more hours... sleep on planes really doesn't come easy to me.
It was a late arrival in Tokyo, so I scrambled to jot a few email messages at the free cyber-cafe, bought some candies with my leftover Japanese change from before, and just made the flight. This time I watched my first truly fantastic movie of the trip... about a young man who moves from Kyoto to Edo in feudal Japan to open a tofu shop and saw some snippets of Annie Hall after that. Then I felt like a truck had ran over me... for the next few hours I was somewhere between sleep and awake, knowing only that I couldn't open my eyes or else it felt like burning acid was over them. I arrived in Dallas rather upset that my work had twice routed me through the US, which in the post 9/11 world has some rather tough immigration and baggage details to deal with, especially when on this trip the US was merely a few hour layover for the bigger and brighter world ahead. So I checked out of DFW and then checked back in. I wandered a bit confused around the airport looking for food and nearly fell on some slick tiles in front of a McDonalds as a dozen young men wearing matching matching green and white jumpsuits looked up. Later I was to see them all on my small prop plane to Mexico City and still later I was to find out these were the members of the Mexican National Football (Soccer) team, who had just finished playing (and losing) an Olympic qualifying match to Brazil in Dallas! As we landed in Mexico City, they were swamped with autograph and picture requests.
I don't remember much of that flight except for how awful so many different parts of my body were feeling. I tried to make conversation with the enthusiastic young Mexican playwright next to me who had been visiting schools in Kansas and NYC and who I tried to explain what in the world I'd been doing in Rangoon. As I moved through the fourth of fifth plane flights, oval Asian eyes were turning slowly into bushy Mexican moustaches and airplane announcements were cycling from Burmese through to Thai, Japanese, and finally Spanish. I was fairly good at separating the different currencies in my passport case and felt like a secret agent as I kept swapping one for the other, like I should get my other passport or identify cards to go with it. I was much less good with the coins, and as I reach in my pocket now I find dimes, nickels, 50 yen pieces, and almost entirely identical 10 baht and 5 peso coins. Also I had to continue getting straight that something like 100 baht was only 3 dollars while 100 pesos was more like 10... much harder when signing off on hotel bills that numbered to the thousands. Then I had to remember when I could say something like “tiene recebo” and when “sumimasen” would and would not be understood, or when to greet someone with “mingalaba” or when to say “sawadee krup.”
I took a taxi through the crowded evening streets of Mexico City and headed towards the Zocalo, where my hotel was situated. It was a building that dated back to the 16th Century. Mexican Independence Day was now only a few days away and the entire square was crammed with thousands of peoples and booths and large lights in the Mexican colors making the images of the Mexican flag, symbols, and people's faces. Here are some pictures:
With my backpacker looks and my backpacker packs, they denied me through the front entrance where a large dinner was going on representing achievements in bottled water (no joke) and sent me through a side door. The pain was almost overwhelming now. I checked in, went to my room and took a shower, watched a few minutes of CNN and the big Bush speech, and then went out to the Zocolo for just a few minutes. As I went back to bed, the speeches were beginning from the bottled water celebration and I had to turn the lights back on to find some earplugs. I woke up several times in the night and set my alarm for 6.30 am for morning meditation, in which it finally felt not like it was a big truck that had hit me but only a minivan or station wagon. I gathered my things, had some greasy breakfast with what I could find that didn't contain meat or fish (and luckily Mexico and Burma are about the same latitude so the fruits are nearly identical) and called a taxi for the airport. Mexico City airport was now being slightly kinder to me... immigration and baggage had taken only a fraction of the time it had taken in previous visit.
I took another prop plane to Oaxaca, landed in the airport and took a "collectivo" to my apartment, where I met the lovely family who owns the pension and my co-trainer. And, with that we went out to an Italian restaurant as my per diem was fading, arranged Week 1 schedules, and within hours I'd be the lead trainer on another intensive TESOL course...
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