Trying to leave BKK during a coup
It's a little after 5:30 AM in BKK, and I've been up for the past three hours. My cell phone rang at 2:30 this morning and it was my wife telling me to look out the window. I'm at the Sheraton Grande and I see nothing except rainy streets. She asks, "do you see any tanks?" Nope, nothing. We hang up and I turn on CNN. Apparently we still have CNN (but not the BBC) while most of the city does not. While sending an e-mail to friends letting them know I'm OK, I hear gun shots from a distance a burst of three rounds. OK, this doesn't look good, so I'll try to get out today.
I'm booked on CX and figure that their BKK res office is closed, so I try HKG - no luck, my call can't go through. So since I booked on AA.com, I can get through to the US and get the EXP desk. The EXP angel books rebooks me on an 11ish flight BKK-HKG-SFO and then onward to QX to PDX. I know that the 950AM flight has an aircraft that gets in the night before, and I ask if I can move to that leg; again no problem. I head downstairs to the lobby and inquire about moving my check out to a few hours away and get a limo to the airport. The desk clerk acts like coups happen here all the time (well they do happen a lot) and gets me a limo for 6AM.
I'm packed up and ready to go. Supposidly the airport is running normally. I'll report in as the day progresses.