Mrs P and Captain John

Well, we arrived safe and well (albeit pretty knackered) in Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok (BKK) late evening around 7 pm. Roth activated his eSIM, and we booked our taxi as we navigated our way to the Grab pick-up point. It took a bit longer for the taxi to arrive than expected due to traffic, but it was a well-managed system, and there were loads of people getting their Grab Taxis from there. We decided on this as we'd read that the actual airport taxis are quite a bit more expensive, and there are some scammers. Due to the time of night (it was dark), the heat (30oC) and our exhaustion - there was no way we would have contemplated the public transport system to get into Bangkok and then have to find our accommodation, but there were lots of passengers that knew the transport system well and off they went.

I will update more on our arrival once we have settled in a bit more and had a chance to explore, but I wanted to share a lovely little story that we encountered at London Heathrow....

We had just plonked ourselves down on a couple of seats beside our departure gate, getting ready for the next leg of our journey from London to Doha. There was an older, very ordinary-looking lady sitting on her own just opposite us, and we smiled in passing as you do when you are in a waiting type area. We hadn't been there very long when she suddenly stood up to greet someone walking toward her (and at our backs). It turned out to be a very tall and handsome Captain who was wheeling his bags towards the gate with other crew members. They stood talking for a little bit in the aisle, and then he motioned for them to sit down together, where they continued to chat away, and I'm thinking, 'oh look - that's the Captain of our plane sitting right there just across from us'. So after about 10 minutes, he went away and I could help myself, so I smiled and asked the lady if the young gentleman was a relative of hers, and she replied that he was her son. Well, we had the most lovely and amazing chat with this quiet, humble and unassuming lady. What an inspiration she was.

She had recently turned 70 and her brother and sister were not able to make her special birthday celebrations, so her son had decided if they could not come to her, he would take her to them! And I mean quite literally, as her siblings and other family members live in South Africa, which is where this lady had originally been born and brought up. I was absolutely smitten with pride for this lady, who again was so shy and humble.

During our chat, she told us that her son had decided that he wanted to be an airline pilot from the age of about 11, and they struggled a lot along the way. His father had passed away when he was young, and she had used the life insurance money from this to help pay for her son's flying lessons (any birthday or Christmas, all he asked for was a flying lesson). I could tell the way she was talking that they had had to work hard (both of them) to get the money to pay for the lessons and training. She talked about how everything became so much harder after 9/11 (in 2001) for any young would-be pilots as a lot of training schools stopped working with youngsters.

It was fascinating, and we were so delighted when one of the air stewards approached her to tell her that her boarding pass had been upgraded. We went our separate ways at the boarding - she through the VIP lane and we on economy, but we were so thrilled to have encountered this beautiful, lovely lady (and her son) on our journey. I hope she got some 'selfies' with her son flying the plane, as he said he would call for her during the flight. For us, we gave Captain John a 10-star rating for his takeoff, flight and landing and for being a good son.

On our next journey, I had to laugh when Roth complained that the pilot of the 2nd leg did not have as good a take-off as 'John'.

Well done Mrs P & Captain John - it was a heart-warming pleasure to have encountered you both and your journey. I so wish I had got a photo of you both - though I tell Mrs P, she and her son were getting an entry in my blog post, which she laughed at.