The passport stamps have to be right. I did depart Nepal on 10 January 1991 and the same day arrived in Thailand the same day and was given a three month visa. I do not understand why the ticket below bears the date 12 January 1991. All I can assume is that I must have changed the date or the flight or it must have been changed for me.
I had to check in at 7.00am. It was foggy. It was, as stated earlier, foggy every morning until after 10.00am. My flight was due to leave at 9.00am. The departure was delayed by the totally unforeseen circumstance of fog. Who could have predicted it?
Whilst whiling away the waiting time before the flight was called I got talking to a couple called Allan from Melbourne, Australia and Marilia from Sao Paulo, Brasil. We had something in common. Both of them had been living and working in North London. Marilia was employed behind the bar at the Town & Country Club in Kentish Town. It is highly possible that Marilia had served me with beer in a plastic glass on one or more of the many occasions I had been there to see a band. They had set off after me but they too had been in India. Allan said they had nearly not been allowed in because Marilia had got so pissed on the complimentary Air France vin rouge. On arrival she had kissed the tarmac like the Pope! They were very good company. The notes I made say that I also met a Japanese woman. I haven't made a note of her name, she must have made an impression at the time but now ... nothing.
I don't know who had a card for the Clean & Calm Guest House but it was a good recommendation. The notes are sparse. I actually wrote "Flight" and then "Arrive" then "200B taxi C & C G H" and on the next line "Riverside Restaurant". I am sure we arrived after dark and therefore arrived without a full appreciation of where we had arrived. I do remember that as we exited the airport we walked through a Duty Free shopping areas selling what seemed to be fantastic stuff at amazingly low prices. On close examination the prices were in US dollars so they were not that great. The goods were very western too.
On arrival at the Guesthouse we got rooms. I haven't found a note of how much the room was. I think it was about £1.00 per night which when I arrived was 50B. One thing is for sure my room didn't have a view of the Chao Phraya river. It had no windows at all because it was on the ground floor and the door was straight into the sort of dining/sitting area. It smelled very clean. It smelled strongly of chemical insecticides.
