Mr Hen

Last day today, back to Angkor Thom today, this time to Baphuon, Phimeanakas & Khleang. Some unusual temples and carvings here including the parade of elephants and a wall of hundreds of buddhas. I'd picked out a picture of buddhas to use but decided Mr Hen should be today's Blip as he was a very important part of our trip, getting us to and from the temples every day, each time on a different road so we could see different parts of Angkor. It was quite sad to say cheerio to him at lunchtime.

We had lunch at the hotel, then spent a wee bit of time at the pool before packing and driving to the airport.
Back on Bangkok airways to Bangkok, the flight was fuller this time. All was going well, we took off 15 minutes early and were well on our way when I started to see huge flashes of lightning in the sky. Shortly after that the small plane was buffetted like mad and the whole cabin was lit up with the lightning flashes. The pilot then announced that the storm was too bad to enable a landing attempt so we spent the next half hour being bounced around while the pilot circled and tried to land. He did eventually get us down after a pretty hairy descent. I tend not to worry too much about flying, I'm of the mentality that if anything does happen there's nothing you can do so no point getting upset, if you're gonna go, you're gonna go. Also, my sister was terrified so I thought it was better if I stayed calm to try to reassure her.
Anyway, thanks to the skilled pilot, we got off in one piece then had to dodge the lightning on the runway while we ran to the transfer bus. Safely in the terminal we could finally relax.
Second leg of the flight was long, tiring and not the best due to bad seats and my sister's short temper. But 11 hrs later we were back in London.


edit - adding this as an assignment Blip, I'm quite sure 'Mr Hen' isn't his real name and we never learned anything about him or his life as his English was very limited, but we felt we made a friend. Mr Hen - a stranger and a friend at the same time.
:o)