Part Two: Your Pre-Flight Boarding Call

In the morning most of my swelling had gone down and my trip out to the bus station to pick up my bags went smoothly. I wasn't as early at the airport as I would have liked to have been, but I got there with plenty of time to spare.

At the Cathay Pacific counter I hauled my bag up on the scale and brought out my passport. "My name is Jennifer Jones," I said. "I'm on the ten fifty flight to Hong Kong and Vancouver."

"Hmmmm," said the airline agent. "I don't seem to have you on my system."

"Well," I said helpfully, "here is my confirmation number. Does that help?"

The agent looked thoughtful and then called her manager. "Aha!" I thought. "They have made a mistake. Perhaps they overbooked the plane. Perhaps they are upgrading me to first class."

When she got off the phone, I discovered that quite the contrary to being upgraded, I didn't have a ticket at all. My travel agent, she explained, had never given the airline payment for the booking, so the airline had "washed" the booking from their system. Not only did I not have a flight, but the flight was booked and completely full. "Call your travel agent," she said. "They probably just forgot to pay."

It's Sunday, I thought. What kind of travel agent works on Sunday? So with an hour and a half before flight time, I rushed to the phones and started making phone calls. The shop had two numbers and I had the personal cell phone of the travel agent. His name is Waiphot and he was recommended to me by my good friend Mel who had been using him for two years. In fact, she had even left her stuff at his place for a few months in storage while she had gone travelling awhile ago.

The cell phone rang busy. The shop never answered. I called Mel. "That's strange," she said. "The shop is open on Sunday and there is always someone there."

I returned to the check-in counter. "Get me on this flight."

There were three other people flying stand-by ahead of me. I had to wait another fifteen minutes. A seat became available. I had to go to another counter to pay for it. The flight was boarding and they hadn't even checked my bags in yet. They showed me the bill. It was twice what I had paid for the round-trip ticket and would only get me one-way home to Canada. I closed my tearing eyes and said, "Do it."

Ticket in hand, I ran for security only to get stopped. Damned airport tax. There was a line up. "Please," I begged. "My flight leaves in fifteen minutes, could I…"

"Mine too," barked the man in front. "Hey, baby, give me my wallet will you?"

The man behind him let me in. I paid and hit security. Luckily security in Thailand is nothing like most countries. It took less than five minutes. I ran towards my gate, boarded the plane and sat down. I had made it.