An interesting day, that's for sure.

We left our Bangkok Hotel at 11:15 A.M, confident that we had plenty of time to check in our bags and catch the 2:00 pm flight to Luang Prabang.

Once we arrived at the Airport and checked the Departures Board we realised that 2:00 P.M. was the arrival time in Laos, not the departure time from Thailand!!

Much panic ensued as by the time we:-

* Attempted to check in our bags (which we didn't really need for one night in Bangkok);

* Were told the Departure Tax was 1,400 baht (Which we were not expecting - we only had 300 baht);

* Ran around frantically to first change $US into Baht;

* Then find the mysterious Ticket Office and pay the tax,

we had 20 minutes left before the boarding gate closed at 12:25 P.M. and we hadn't gone through Passport Control yet - aahhhrrghh!

Desley threw herself on the mercy of the person at the head of our Passport queue (whilst I bravely kept our crap place in line). The second couple in line gave us their spot and after a bit more delay whilst the Customs Officer got grumpy with the Lady in front of me who seemed even less prepared than us, we were through to the other side and off to find our far distant Boarding Gate - the elusive Gate D8b

Have you ever seen overweight, desperate people running through an Airport, their mouths contorted by pain from the effort - desperately trying to drag enough ragged breath into their carcases to keep going?

I have - a few times - and have always thought "You feeble minded idiots - why didn't you plan this better?"

Well, we were most definitely everyone else's idiots today.

I won't go into the full horror of it all but after chancing heart attacks by running with maxed-out backpacks for what seem to be about a kilometre, realising we had run right past our by now closed Boarding Gate, backtracking and asking a total stranger in a uniform to help, we were directed down the closed stairs where a Thai Airways staff member loaded us into an otherwise empty mini-bus for a 30 kilometre per hour dash to the third last Plane at the far end of what is a surprisingly large Airport Complex.

All the while we imagined the up-coming Walk Of Shame down the full length of the plane cabin, apologising to all and sundry for being so rude, stupid or both.

When the mini bus pulled up at our waiting Airbus A320-200 a good 10 minutes after the Plane was due to have taken off, we were a bit surprised to see a full bus load of passengers slowing climbing the stairs into the Plane on one side and all their luggage going up a ramp into the Plane on the other side.

Well, no harm done then and so we headed off towards Laos, our secret safe.