I phoned the passport office immediately to book the earliest possible fast track appointment; we were told the earliest one in London was on Thursday, which was no good. They had one on Monday at 8:30 but it was in Liverpool (we're in Bognor Regis, about as far away from Liverpool as you can be in England) and it takes four hours to process. Our flight was at 17:00 on Monday, so as a last resort I booked it.
I phoned the airline to change his flight to a day or two later but because we booked through and online agent, we had to phone them. They were shut on a Sunday. Fuck.
The train from Liverpool to London takes just over two hours so getting to Heathrow before check-in closed (15:30) was possible... We'd get the passport at 12:30, get to the station, get on a train, possibly get to London for 15:00, get from Euston to Paddington and alight the 'Heathrow Express'. It was too close. Too many variables. We'll try a flight.
No airline flies from Liverpool to Heathrow. Fuck.
Sure, they go to Gatwick every 45 minutes, or fly from Manchester to Heathrow every 30 minutes, but not they way we needed it. Let's see if we could drive it.
Getting there would be no problem, we could go up tonight, be the first people in the passport office. Then get our passport at 12:30. From the passport office to Heathrow Terminal 3 is 209 miles. 209 miles in three hours. The passport office is buried in the far western part of the city near the sea so getting out and on to motorway would take a while. Plus you'd have to pray there wasn't any traffic, or crashes or a breakdown all while averaging 70mph. This was going to be as close as it could be.
I woke Toby up and told him the news. He packed a bag while we watched the Wimbledon final (which didn't help to calm us down, but fuck yes Andy).
Toby and Dad headed up to Liverpool and stayed in a Travel Lodge with an early alarm set, to get this damn, blasted passport.
I didn't sleep on Sunday night.
Sunday morning came and I finished (started) my packing. Ben, Will and Tom drove me to the airport at around 12:30 while I stalked my brother's progress on the Find my Friends app. By 12:30 they were on the road and they hit the motorway soon after.
I arrived at Heathrow with ages to spare while they bolted along the M6. I tracked them all the way but I lost signal as they passed Oxford.
Anyway. Not to dramatise it any further, they made it with a little time to spare and we boarded the plane we'd looked forward to boarding for months.
It was the most stressful 24 hours of my life, but then we arrived in Bangkok.
We arrived and Kerrie and Anna surprise us at the airport with a homemade sign and we took a taxi in to town.
It was raining, hard. Bangkok was not as I remembered. Unlike London whose skyscrapers are few and limited to its heart, Bangkok has hundreds. And they begin 20 miles outside the centre of the city. Many are abandoned or unfinished with smashed windows. We saw two little girls, high in the windowless frame of one skyscraper, holding hands and looking out across the city. I missed this Bangkok when I came last. The sky high tenements, the irony of the poverty, the children. Khao San Road was devoid of children when I was here last, and now I saw them, forced to the outskirts, looking over the city they would likely live and die in.
Our hotel, Penpark Place was hidden down a backstreet, ten minutes from Khao San Road (the backpacker's Mecca). The sign read 'Penpark P Place', the first of a number of little typos that made us laugh.
We met Kerrie and Anna in town and ate and began to drink, toasting our luck and laughing at our idiocy in not checking Toby's passport. We ate well and shared a shisha, before Toby slipped of his chair, split his knee open, sent Kerrie (and the table) bouncing across the room and smashing our glasses. Fuck.
The next day we met the girls again and took a trip to the river, before we got a tuk tuk back to Khao San. I paid the man and headed off. Check my pockets; wallet, keys, pho... Fuck! Toby and I chased this tuk tuk down the road for ages before he disappeared into the hectic Bangkok traffic. 'Nice running man', said a local as I fantasised caving his face in. I felt sick. As you know, I lost a phone only two weeks ago and now, on my first day in Bangkok, some Thai guy has it. Fuck.
We spent the afternoon phoning it and trying to track it with 'Find my iPhone'. Someone answered and hung up at one point. I felt frustration like I'd never felt before.
The worst part was phoning home to hear a voice to calm me down and my mum losing her shit on the phone. I hung up and had another beer.
The beer turned to shots turned to cocktails turned to buckets of booze in a bar high above Khao San Road. We drank and sang with Felix and Clem until dawn. After that we made good choices and were responsible and healthy.
A couple more days in Bangkok were spent wandering through the city. The place is everything; every taste or emotion, every smell, every sound, every sight, all mixed together to create something incomprehensible.
Good though, we had good fun.
We're in Chiang Mai now which is so much more accessible. Yesterday we got a plane over and rented a couple of scooters. The road out of Chiang Mai winds higher and higher through the thickest rainforest. We parked up and saw waterfalls and ageing temples. The very tallest trees had fallen and were laying on their side with a scar in the canopy above.
I've run out of time. I'll blog soon x
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