what’s weather like there?…

Bangkok airport arrivals is perfectly normal apart from the lack of baggage trolleys. No big deal: I refer the honourable gentleman to the previous comment re: not packing loads of unnecessary crap. I gets me bag and wanders out, finding a stray trolley on the way. My bag may not be that heavy, but I’m still a lazy bastard.

The new Bangkok airport is pretty funky, done in the modern airport style which seems to be “build one really enormous central hall with a really high roof where everybody checks in” rather than the rats-maze style of old, e.g. Heathrow. Arrivals is on the 1st floor, departures up on 4, and groovy travelators take you up on a gentle zig-zag; it’s all rather Gattaca, or it would be if they turned the lights down a bit and invited Uma Thurman over for tea. On the 4th I check the board and it tells me to check in at counter T.

It’s midnight. My flight is at half two, so I’m not necessarily expecting the check-in staff to be there yet but neither am I expecting people to be sitting behind the check-in desks, on the check-in staff chairs or on the baggage conveyors themselves. Wow, I think, these travellers are taking a rather relaxed approach. Whatever. I smile at a random girl sitting on a trolley and think I’ll go for a potter while I wait for the Emirates staff to rock up.

I still haven’t looked outside at this point; nor is it obvious that there’s something happening.

The 3rd floor has a couple of cafés and restaurants, the usual airport fare. It’s late, so this isn’t that unusual either, but the restaurants are semi-closed; tables block the main eating space but people are still serving punters. There are queues at most places and it doesn’t feel quite right, but I put it down to an Asian airport at midnight, which is never the most predictable place in the world at the best of times.

I don’t recall when I realise what’s happening. Perhaps I do spot the fact that all of the doors on the 4th floor are locked. Perhaps it’s the hundreds of yellow t-shirt clad people lying on the main road outside. Perhaps it’s the nice Scottish bloke Danny who I start chatting to (bald men stick together). Whatever it was, within 15 minutes I click that something is happening.

As I write this I wonder why I didn’t put two and two together. Sorry sir, your flight might be delayed leaving Samui because of a mob at the destination airport; people sitting behind the check-in desks, which I’ve never seen before no matter what the delay. It’s not like I don’t follow the international news or that this hasn’t happened before in Thailand. I should probably slap my hand against my forehead but I’m writing this in the lobby bar of a posh-ish hotel and I’d look like a right twat so I won’t bother.

I chat to the girl, who is sitting reading a book and has fashioned herself quite a canny seat from her trolley and her bag. Dutch, Vivienne, 18 years old, and the poor girl is on her way home for her brother’s funeral which is in two days. I didn’t ask how. She seemed remarkably chipper all things considered.

I try to be pragmatic in these situations; there’s no point in histrionics, no point stressing yourself if there’s not much you can do. (Thanks, mam.) This sort of thing never gets resolved in an hour or two, so I pretty quickly think that I’ll ditch the airport and go find a hotel or a hostel in central Bangkok. If they’re going to try to overthrow a government, I might as well be drinking a beer somewhere pleasant while they do it, no? But I’ve befriended this Dutch girl and don’t want to leave her on her own, so I ask her if she’d like to share a cab and find somewhere to stay. Poor lass doesn’t have any money and has promised her parents that she’d stay in the airport so she could be on the first possible flight out – and what can you say to a girl going home for her brother’s funeral, “don’t be daft pet, you’re going nowhere”? Course not, so I make my trolley in to a seat like hers and sit and finish Porno. (Brilliant – read it.)

Time passes. I find water and buy 4 bottles. I hide 3 in my bag. Oh, hang on, I forgot something. Where are the Emirates staff telling us what’s going on, by the way? In fact, where are any airport staff telling us what’s going on? Fucked if I know, ‘cos they’re sure as hell not at the airport. Emirates will be receiving a sternly worded letter (“Yours faithfully, Angry from Melbourne”) when slash if I finally get home. Anyway … nothing much happens for a while. I make sure I’ve got the right type of film in the camera (T-Max 3200, thanks again Bart) and potter some more. I’m more bored than anything.

Then the riot police appear from nowhere and start coming down those groovy travellators. Lots of them, and they’re all very cool and calm and collected and the way that not-quite-horizontal escalator thingy delivers them to the concourse then they step off with their shields and full face helmets and batons and whatnot looks, honestly, really quite cool. A flurry of photographers, yours truly included (thanks, Dad), burst in to action; by now the media are there in full force and I think they’re glad for the action because most of them had almost dozed off. The coppers step off on level 3, over to the next one, and down to 2. And down to 1. And out the front doors, by which time we’re up on 4 looking down through the road to the ground level below expecting a bit of action.

Nah. They just went … somewhere. Do you wonder why the only interesting photos you see of the riot police on news.bbc.co.uk are of them wandering calmly through the terminal? That’s because the most interesting thing the riot police did was to wander calmly through the terminal.

The Scottish bloke Danny is with his family: brother, sister-in-law, mother, father, and 3 kids, one of which is very very young. A baby. The other two are only about seven or eight (I think – I’m terrible at judging kids’ ages). They’re all remarkably composed, drinking cans of Singha, his brother has had his picture taken at the door with a couple of black-clad lads holding big sticks and samurai swords (not confirmed lethal, don’t worry mother – they were probably from Toys ‘R Us). The kids look like they’re getting tired, though – it’s getting on for 4am.

Tick, tock. I capitulate to the global domination of Starbucks and order 2 x double espresso, tuna sandwiches and “butter cake”. I take one half of said order to Vivienne, who by now is talking to a couple of lovely old women from Yorkshire. She accepts the coffee and declines the rest. I can’t believe she’s still smiling. One of the ladies from Yorkshire is laughing as she’s found the airport comments form and is wondering what she’s going to do to suggest they improve their service. I love the British.

That is, until I overhear an English guy banging on about how much it must cost to keep the airport open for this long – air-con alone is “at least 50k” he reckons, on what authority or in which currency I don’t know. “All these people working for nothing,” as if the guys staying on at Starbucks are not part of the greater cause, as if some of them don’t wish they could be outside wearing yellow. It’ll be “the manager’s call” as to whether this continues. Yeah pal, the manager of Bangkok airport will be the one to order the military coup, or the one to prevent the ousting of a government, or the one to tell hundreds of protestors to go home, because it costs too much to keep his building cool overnight. You fucking idiot. Give me that passport, here’s an American one you can use instead. Your new name’s Dwayne. Catch ya.

It’s getting on for 5am and the Scottish contingent are leaving. The kids are tired, Emirates UK has told them a fucking lot more than Emirates in Bangkok bothered to not to bother staying in the airport as there are definitely no flights leaving tonight. They’ve got a 3 hour taxi ride back to the holiday house they were staying in, which I think they might even have owned; whatever, they’re off. They’re nice enough to come and find me as I’ve left my bags next to their stuff, and they want to tell me that they can’t watch them any more. Not that I think they really need watching by this point, but still. Lovely, lovely family. Thanks, Danny.

This is my cue. I’d been thinking about it, and now that the Dutch girl has ditched me for the old dears from Yorkshire (I wonder whether her mother didn’t tell her to do that: “yes, I’ve found a nice English boy to talk to” – “don’t go talking to strange boys in the airport, dear – find some old ladies from Yorkshire, at least they’ll make you a cup of tea if it all goes to hell”) I don’t feel morally obliged to hang around any more. I bid them my farewell and get the lift down to the arrivals floor where some taxis are still appearing.

As soon as I walk out of the lift, in true Thai style a couple of people shout “taxi? hotel?” in my face and I immediately say yes. The strange and beautiful thing about Thailand is that, even in situations like this, you still get the feeling that you can trust everybody. You don’t need to find the Official Tourist Taxi or any such crap, you just go with the bloke who takes you to his Camry (and immediately puts the air-con on. It’s five o’clock in the bloody morning! Jesus!) out in the car park and starts driving you to some hotel. City or near airport? he asks. Near airport, I say, so I can get back quick-fast if necessary. We chat; his English is very good. He asks me about the protests and I’m smiling, I’ve been walking out between the people all night and all I’ve got from anybody is smiles and a feeling that there’s an unspoken “hey Westerner, sorry about this but you kind of know why we’re doing it, right?” apology from them. See that crap that tourists quoted on BBC News say about there being a feeling of “hostility” and it being a “siege”? Ha!, christ, they’re out there playing the bongos and they’ve got a big truck with a band playing funky tunes and they’re all laughing and clapping these plastic clappy-hand toys together! A siege?! God help these people if they ever find themselves in genuine trouble. Why don’t the BBC ever quote me? “It were proper brilliant like, r8 good party like and people was top man, bangin’ tunes and evryfink! Toooooootally wickid man, better than Ibiza innit! -John Noble, Melbourne”

So I’m chatting to the cabby-fella and I tell him, hey, these things happen right?, at least it makes for an interesting story right?, and he’s genuinely chuffed that I’m not angry. He personally is 50/50 with the protestors. A lot of people are; the protestors seem like a fairly vocal minority. After all, this government was democratically elected.

We get to the shabby-looking hotel and I get the last room, apparently. It was like stepping back in time, or going to Scotland. Still, any real bed is a glorious sight when your last resting place was the grubby floor underneath a check-in counter, so I’m reasonably content.

At this point I’d assumed that my travel insurance wasn’t going to cover this due to point 1.3 in the “What We Will Not Pay For” section:

Claims arising directly or indirectly from war, acts of foreign enemies, hostilities or warlike operations (whether war be declared or not), civil war, rebellion, insurrection, civil commotion assuming the proportions of or amounting to an uprising, military or usurped power.

As a result, I was happy enough in my shabby nowhere-near-anything-but-the-airport 1960s throwback hotel. However when I called the insurance company the next day, I discovered that I was wrong. Thank goodness for seemingly contradictory statements in travel insurance policy documents.