We made it … whew! I don’t love the process of traveling, but I’m always thankful that I expended the effort once we arrive. We flew overnight from Abu Dhabi to Bangkok on a very large, very full plane — we were all the way back in row 50 and not an empty seat in sight. I don’t know how many were on board, but since there were rows of 10 in economy, I figure at least 300. And 20% of them walked the aisles all night, talking and chatting like it was a party bus.
So, minimal sleep for me. Not like I could have slept much anyway since I’m not relaxed when traveling: I don’t eat, I pretend to sleep, hoping my body will get the hint, and just endure, ticking away the minutes, hour by hour. I would love to love flying, but the years of anxiety and airplane phobia have left their mark on me, so I can do it, but am always happier to get that part over with.
Last time we made this trip we had to sprint to make our connection because our first leg landed late. We made lots of jokes during trip planning that we did not want to repeat the Bangkok sprint. We thought we’d be ok this time, but upon landing, I had to be that person: from back in row 50, “excuse me, our next flight is boarding now. So sorry, excuse me.” Which worked until a lady feigned language problems and said “I don’t understand” and froze me out.
That’s ok, TeamChartier can run. So as soon as we freed ourselves from the tube we took off. I couldn’t even tell you how far it was, but we passed or ran on at least 10 of those long flat escalators with stretches in between — we ran forever.
I snapped this photo because it was so funny and ridiculous that we were having to run this same stretch of airport all over again. But we persisted and would have made it — except we hit a wall of people at passport control.
One asset I’ve developed living in the Middle East is to assert myself as a special person. It feels rude to my wait-your-turn American self, but where we live, if you don’t do it, someone else will and you’ll lose out. So I found every person wearing a uniform and pointed out the time on our boarding passes to each official until one lady finally said, “OK, 2 of you come with me.”
She took us past the line to an unopened counter, processed us, and sent us on to security where Camille and I slipped past the bottleneck into the shorter line and snuck our bin onto the conveyer belt in front of a guy who was slow with his shoes. And then more running: around the corner, through the gift shop, all the way to the end of the terminal, down the stairs and there was our gate, with the last bus idling, waiting to leave.
Panting, we passed her our passports and boarding passes and said we had 4 more still coming. Over the next 5 minutes we stalled while the rest of our team trickled in.
I was relieved to have all 6 of us finally seated onboard. We had a date with some ATVs upon landing in Koh Samui and I didn’t want to spend the morning waiting on a plane instead of wheeling through the jungle. 
And to complete the circle, the other half of our group had to run to catch the same flight later in the day. My friend said next time she flies to Bangkok, she’s staying there. No more running!