Blessings of the Airport Gods

We have now experienced two airport miracles. The first occurred when we were flying from Kathmandu to Bangkok. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 3 pm and so at 12 pm we were at our hotel, packed up and doing some email when I decided to double check the flight time. To our amazement the flight was now scheduled for 1:30 pm. We jumped into a taxi, sped to the airport, and not only did we make it with time to spare, we were also bumped up to first class. That was miracle number one. Miracle number two occurred as we were leaving Thailand to go to Cambodia. Rather than travel almost 25 hours via train and bus we opted to buy some rather cheap plane tickets from Phuket to Bangkok and from Bangkok to Phnom Penh. However, when we were booking the flights the cheapest combination only left us with one and a half hours in between. We wrongly assumed they would be able to check our baggage through to Phnom Penh and we would be okay.

When we arrived at the airport in Phuket we were informed that we needed to have three hours between flights and there was little chance for us to make our connecting flight. They recommended we queue up early to try and get a seat at the front of the plane and they would flag our baggage so it would be one of the first off the plane. However, when we arrived in Bangkok and were getting off the plane we saw a woman holding a sign with our names on it and our bags sitting next to her. She whisked us and our bags away, in our own private minibus, and dropped us off at the terminal. However, she did not give us further directions before speeding away. Since we were dropped at the A/B terminal we, again wrongly, assumed our plane must be leaving from this terminal so we ran as fast as we could, carrying our backpacks, looking for our gate. We finally found a reader board showing our flight to be leaving from the E terminal so we again ran as fast as we could in the other direction to the departures area, where we rechecked our bags and since we were in a hurry they did not even charge us for the excess weight beyond 15 kgs. Our bags currently weight 17 and 19 kgs. We then raced to passport control knowing full well this may be the stopping point for us. We overstayed our visa by one day and knew we would probably be charged for the extra day. However, we were waved through and made it to the E concourse sweaty, red-faced, breathing hard and waited for 15 minutes as our flight had suddenly become delayed.