Thursday, March 2nd

OK, so this is it. The last day. I was feeling awful, because I knew I would miss so much. I checked out of my hotel, left my bag in storage, and went to take the Skytrain to Mo Chit and the MRT metro to Phahon Yothin in order to get my vacation photos printed at a bargain price of only 2.50 baht. With 399 pictures, it turned out to cost me nearly 1000 baht, but then again, this was 1/6th of the price back home. The clerks did not manage very well with English (this was not exactly a “touristy” area) but sign language and patience did the trick.

They needed two hours to do the developing, so I took the MRT metro back downtown to Sukhumvit/Asoke, and then the Skytrain one stop further down to Phrom Phong and the Emporium, where I sat down at Starbucks with a large drip coffee and today’s edition of the Bangkok Post. I contacted Sampron (from Koh Jum) who was in Bangkok at the moment, and we agreed to meet at Mo Chit again at 15:00, as I would go back there to get the photos. After some delays (hey, it’s Bangkok) I fetched the photos at Phahon Yothin and took the MRT back to Mo Chit, where he picked me up. We went downtown to have lunch at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, but we had to go to Siam Square instead, as Sampron had left his membership card at home. We had a snack and a nice conversation on a Starbucks in Siam Square (I don’t know why I keep ending up at Starbucks, I really hate that place) and later I was offered a ride to the airport. We got my bag out of storage and went uptown in his neighbourhood near Don Muang where we had a meal and some beers, before I was dropped off at the airport.

KLM was in a good mood that day, so they gave me an exit row seat, but unfortunately I got the seat right next to the emergency slide, so that my legroom got even smaller than with an ordinary seat. The good thing was that I could have my legs resting on the slide during flight. I didn’t give this much thought – I was too sad to leave Thailand in order to enjoy this rare privilege at all.

When arriving in Amsterdam, disembarking from the aircraft, I was welcomed by a chilly wind coming into the walkbridge from outside. My thin jacket didn’t help much, and I was really feeling down when it turned out to be somewhat of a snow blizzard around Europe that day. Most flights was delayed or cancelled, but eventually my connecting plane turned up at the gate, and I got back home to Kristiansand about 90 minutes after schedule.

With my pockets full of everything but Norwegian currency, and a bus service that didn’t accept credit cards, I went about the airport looking for an ATM. After finding one (on the other end of the airport, of course) withdrawing enough money for the bus and a taxi from the bus terminal, I discovered that the bus was gone. Luckily, the next bus would come by 30 minutes later. When I got to Arendal, I decided to not waste money on a taxi, so I had to run around to the other side of the terminal to catch the bus going to my parent’s house (where I had parked my dog and car while I was away), nearly missing it. Never mind that my shoelaces had gone up, that I had gotten a cold and was feeling terrible – the bus driver had the biggest smile I had seen after arriving back in Europe, and that instantly made me feel a whole lot better. On the bus, I met an old friend from back when I grew up here, as he was going home together with his young son and baby daughter. We nearly didn’t recognize each other, but when we did, we had a great oppertunity to catch up.

At around 14:00 on Friday, March 3rd, I was back where I started.

It had been wonderful.