Standstill

Day 260
The Qatar Air flight was one of the best flights that I have ever been on. They had a ton of movies and they kept me up all night.

By the time I got to Doha, Qatar, I was extremely tired. I was looking forward to just getting on the plane and passing out. I had a two hour layover, and I felt that I could barely stay up that long. Then I saw that my flight was delayed by and hour. A little after that it was delayed until 1pm. I knew before I left that there had been some protests going on in Thailand, what I didn’t know was that it had caused the airport to be shut down. The long delay meant that I was entitled to free breakfast. It wasn’t very good, just fries and a pastry. While I was eating my flight disappeared off the screen completely. I finished up and went to ask about it, I was told that it was fine and just to take a seat.

It was only a few minutes before an announcement was made that the flight was canceled. When I went to the desk and asked what my options were I was told that I could wait in the airport and fly standby the next time there was a flight to Bangkok, but that it could take up to a week or I could go back to London and they would refund the second flight on my ticket. I explained to the man that going back to London wasn’t an option as I had no proof of further travel, also that I didn’t fly all the way to Doha for fun. I wanted to go someone in Southeast Asia, that I would like to go to KL or Singapore, preferably the latter thought. My name was put on a list.

About an hour later my name was called and I had a ticket to Singapore. I was also going to be given a hotel room for the day and free meals. The hotel wasn’t too bad. At least there was aircon. The free lunch was actually breakfast leftovers, but I didn’t care. I was just way too tired. After eating I went to my room and went to sleep. Even though it had been about 35 hours since I had last slept I still managed to wake up after only 3 hours. I only fell back asleep because I forced myself to.

When I woke up for the second time it was because my stomach was rumbling. I headed downstairs for my very gross but free dinner. When I was done I took a much needed shower. I turned on the tv and was watching a movie and trying to get a few more hours of sleep when I had a knock at my door. I was given a note that said that all the hotels in Malaysia were full and that people going there could either go to Hong Kong instead or go home. I was glad that I was headed to Singapore. I did go down to check on everything though. I was told that instead of going back to the airport at midnight I would be going back at 10. This meant another four hours of hanging out at the airport, I had already spent 6 hours there.

It wasn’t until I got on the plane that I finally felt like this ordeal was over. I was happy to finally be getting someplace that wasn’t Qatar.