Alas, we're leaving the island in the wee hours of tomorrow morning and won't even need to head to the airport until after 9:30 tonight. That is not how it was originally planned. We were going to depart on Friday morning to Bangkok via AirAsia. Eventually in March, we have to head to Kuala Lumpur for our return China Eastern flights to Vancouver. Therefore, we bought all the SE Asian connections on that scrappy, little low-cost carrier.
Yet, somewhere between the time we started this trip and now, AirAsia stopped flying Colombo / Bangkok all together. We learned about it a month before our supposed departure in a curt, unapologetic email. Despite my attempts to communicate with them, I haven't seen any refund on my credit card! I'll pass judgement on the company after we try to use them for flights into and, or, out of Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Malaysia. (Vietnam will be via land borders both coming and going.)
So, the result is we're leaving at one o'clock in the morning to BKK on a Thai Airways flight. Actually, it turns out okay as it will give us two nights in Bangkok rather than one. (The link is the long version and requires nearly two nights to play as well. I'm fond of the Murray Head classic about a chess tournament in Bangkok because we first visited that city in the same era as the music and quite a few times since.)
I expect to be able to upload our progress online during the short time in Thailand. After that I'm not so sure though. We will be going into Burma for at least half of February. I have seen travellers' tales about the inaccessibility of the Internet in that country. I am sure I will not have cell phone access at all. Even if my blog looks stagnant, I will still be ejournaling daily. I'll upload the whole kit and caboodle once pathways to the Inter-web widen!