When we arrived in Hong Kong a few days ago, Allison called Kenya Air to make sure everything was on for our flight to Kenya. We were concerned because we were scheduled for a layover in Bangkok, whose airport was and is currently closed for all flights. The airline was not aware that the Bangkok airport was closed but assured us that our flight was on.
We arrived tonight (Sunday) at the Hong Kong airport, checked in all fifty racers, received our meal vouchers from the airline and gorged ourselves on American fast food.
We looked at our boarding passes to see the following: Flight No. – KQ231, Boarding Time – 21:10 (22:00 departure), Gate – “—“.
First we were told that our plane was stuck in Bangkok and a gate would be on the board when the plane was en route. After we established a home base for the squad everyone whipped out their laptops and lamented the slow or non-existent free wi-fi for about 30-40 minutes. At about 9:50 the board finally lit up saying that our gate was in fact gate 1 and the departure time was still 10:00. We all gathered our things and speed-walked to gate 1.
To our great pleasure there was a much stronger wi-fi connection at gate 1 where we stayed for about 20 minutes. We were then notified that the gate was changed to gate 6 and the departure time would be 11:00. So we all gathered our things and traveled down an escalator into the bowels of the Hong Kong airport and rested at the gate for about 45 seconds until we were told that our flight would be departing from gate 44.
Again we gathered our things and traveled down another escalator, boarded a tram for about 2 minutes, got off the tram, went up another escalator and found gate 44.
Now here we sit at gate 44 as a plane rolls up to the jetway with the board telling us we will apparently have a layover in some place called Utapao.
Let this be a lesson to you all. Do not get too comfortable on the World Race, for your plans are sure to change.
