Flying out (Muscat to Bangkok via Doha)

 The events described in this post took place on or about June 30th, 2010 in Muscat (Oman), Doha (Qatar) and Bangkok (Thailand).  For those of you viewing this through Facebook 'Notes', the original post is available on www.henrickatlarge.blogspot.com. It will enable you access to photo galleries and other multi-media material which don't transfer into 'Notes'

 Any journey starts with a single step.  One, which usually,starts over a threshold.  An act of leaving, an act of escape.  This one was no different.  It started in Muscat, in what some call an airport.  Others see it as a portal of sorts.  Whatever you would like to see it as, this is where this trip started. 

I write this post only for the sake of continuity and narrative.  Not because it is exceptionally important.  We know that all things start somewhere. If I didn't mention it, you would have probably guessed (correctly of course) that it began in exactly such a place.  I am mentioning it though.  As previously stated, not because it is exceptionally important, but because it does need to be documented. 

The trip starts as most do.  I showed up to the airport, waited longer than I had wanted to.  I wandered through the duty-free at Muscat.  As usual, I didnt  find anything that I wanted, and was amazed that things aren\t cheaper than what I could get elsewhere.  Finally I got into a plane.  We took a short flight to Doha (Qatar).  We disembarked, I wandered around another airport.  This one however, had an even larger duty-free (the Doha Duty-free takes up most of the airport).  Again, I have the same two realizations that I mention earlier.  This time, a bit more pronounced and prominent, relative to its size.

When the time came for me to get in the final plane that would take me to Bangkok, I could not wait.  We boarded the aircraft and were promptly on our way.  After another five hours on the plane, we touched down safely onto the tarmac.  With Iphone firmly in hand, I cued up Rush's 'A Passage to Bangkok'.  This was the my first installment of theme-music of my Asian sojurn. 

This is how it all started.  This is how this story begins.  Not uniquely, not in a new, bold and exciting way, but begin it did nontheless.  Now that this seemingly uneventful genesis has been told.... we can get on with business of the telling.