Almost six months ago a friend of ours from Toronto emailed to say that he and some of his friends had booked flights to Thailand and would be in Krungthep several days. Their planned route was from Hong Kong to Samui Island and then arriving in Krungthep on Thursday the 19th and leaving on Sunday the 22nd.
Exciting news! We haven’t seen this friend in two years since our last trip to Toronto, which was just an overnight trip. Over the past several months we’ve anticipated this trip, corresponded about it several times, and were eagerly awaiting his arrival.
So Thursday came and went without a sound. No phone call, no email. Friday passed in the same manner. Saturday morning I checked my email and there was a message, sent from his friend and fellow traveler’s account, saying they had arrived late Friday night and could we give them a call to meet up on Saturday.
Waiting until an appropriate hour of the morning, given their late arrival, I called and spoke with the friend. “Oh, we’re just going to spend the day lounging around the pool,” he said. “Stop by in the afternoon and then we’ll go have dinner.”
I made dinner reservations at a nice riverside restaurant, one that has a great view of the sun setting behind the Temple of Dawn.
Late morning the friend called back, suggesting that we do dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant. He had made reservations for 9 pm. “We’re still going to be by the pool, though, so stop by earlier so we can visit. If we’re not in the room, you can just leave a message.”
I called back just after lunchtime and left a message that we probably couldn’t do such a late dinner since I had a 6 am meeting time for a ride Sunday morning, but we would stop by the hotel later in the afternoon and visit.
View from the Riverside Terrace at the Peninsula Hotel
As Tawn and I left home at 4:00 to drive to the hotel, I left another message. “We’re on our way.” We arrived at the Peninsula Hotel, on the Thonburi side of the river, about 4:30. Wandering through the lobby, then down to the pool, then through the spa area, we couldn’t fine the friends anywhere. Left another message: “We’ll be sitting at the riverside terrace, enjoying a drink and the view.”
We spent the next two hours enjoying that view. The sun set. The lights came on. Once the mosquitos started coming out – going on 7 pm – we decided it was time to head out. I left another message then we retrieved the car and headed back across the river.
Self-portrait at the Riverside Terrace with the Peninsula’s uber-green lawn behind us.
It was thirty minutes later as we were walking into a restaurant for dinner that I received a call. The friends had decided to go watch a movie at Siam Paragon – ostensibly a 2:00 pm show – and they had misunderstood the showtimes and had only just returned to the hotel.
Unfortunately at that point, it was too late to coordinate meeting up. Their flight was the next morning and I had that early bike ride that I had committed to.
Tawn looks stylish in his fedora after a cosmopolitan.
I’ve sent the friend an email to check whether he’s made it back to Toronto safely and to apologize for missing him. I also explained that I must have misunderstood his travel dates as I thought he would arrive on Thursday, not late Friday. No response yet.
In the end it doesn’t matter. Missed connections happen and in this day and age, we can still easily stay in touch and I’m sure our paths will cross again.
Still, there’s a part of me that feels like he didn’t make much effort to connect. Six months of planning and it came down to a decision to go watch “Valkyrie” with Tom Cruise instead of being where he said he’d be so that we could meet up with him? That doesn’t make me feel like Tawn and I are much of priority.
Anyhow, we enjoyed a nice view of the river and the opportunity to take some pictures, embedded above.
christao408 
Man, you are a heck of a lot more understanding than me. The friend seems like a total flake. Those type of people are everywhere in LA, and I have zero patience for that nonsense. That said, the day produced some great photos of you guys, so all wasn’t lost.
Glad you were able to make the best of a frustrating situation. You know your priority better than your Canadian “friend”. You are getting ready for Japan, right?
@CareyGLY – Thank you. I try to be very patient (especially when I lived in LA) because I know that extenuating circumstances, traffic, etc. do arise. And in this case the friend didn’t have a mobile phone with him. Also, this was a rare opportunity to see him and I hate to miss an opportunity.
@stevew918 – Steve, yes, we leave for Tokyo on the 9th. Two weeks from tomorrow. So much to do in preparation!
Your experience is the very opposite of mine. My old classmates and I had a reunion about two months ago. We corresponded by e-mails and everything was perfect as planned. What was more perfect was that our high school teacher, who had never come to our reunion before, knew our reunion by reading our e-mail correspondence. (We have formed an e-mail group so that everyone in the group can read the e-mails and the high school teacher was one of the members of the group.) She knew the time and venue of our reunion. We thought that because she was living in London we didn’t expect her to fly all the way from London to Hong Kong to come to our reunion. Guess what happened. She came to our reunion unexpectedly! You can imagine our surprise and happiness at the moment when she suddenly appeared!
Glad that you guys enjoyed the drinks at the Riverside Terrace. I can imagine how frustrating it is waiting for someone who never cared to show up, I hope the relaxing surroundings and ambiance at the Peninsula made the hours passed by easier! Tawn looked uber-sharp in his signature LaCoste polo shirt! Love the colour!
Who the heck goes to the movies when they have 2 days in Bangkok? That’s like traveling to the Taj Mahal and spending your day in a Starbucks.Agreed with the other folks who commented on this–that’s not much of a friend you’ve got there. Sounds like someone is a bit self-involved and extraordinarily thoughtless. All this…and he has bad taste in movies. 🙂
I am really impressed with your patience level and the way you handled the situation. I personally would most probably be flaming red by the end of it! At the same time, I feel that we shouldn’t be too quick to judge your friend… sometimes things just mess up. I don’t believe that he prioritized the movie, he just might have hoped to do that and spend time with you also but ultimately goofed it up. The reply to your mail will give you the right answer.
The photo of you with the lawn behind hints at a bit of peevishness (though Tawn looks happy). I agree with others – travel all that way and hang out at the pool! Go to a bad movie that can be seen at home!! Dumb.
Odd… if I was traveling, the last thing I would want to do is to watch a movie.
I’m definitely a planner and having that lack of planning would drive me absolutely nuts especially if I knew people were coming in from halfway around the world!
Who travels from Canada to Thailand to spend time watching a movie and hanging around a hotel pool?Sheesh.
@choyshinglin – Now that’s a happy story! Glad it worked out so well.
@seasia4ever – @ElusiveWords – @moptoplop – @murisopsis – Agreed. Watching a movie – particularly a second rate one that could easily be watched back at home – seems an odd way to spend your time when you’re overseas. It it had been some Thai movie that they’d probably never have a chance to see, that would make sense.
@TheCheshireGrins – When I moved here, that’s exactly the way I am. I’ve been accused of becoming “very Thai” in the last three and a half years.
@Dezinerdreams – Vivek, you make the most important point, which is that we can’t really judge until we know the whole story. There are probably many good reasons (not the least of which would be that this friend was traveling with two other people and their needs and desires are legitimate, too) why we ended up not connecting. Friendship is about forgiveness and patience; a missed connection does not equal a bad friend.
Thanks everyone for your comments. Someone replied to my facebook post on this entry that perhaps I was being a bit passive-aggressive in writing this entry. I don’t think so as that friend who visited doesn’t read my blog. Just sharing with you what we did on Saturday afternoon.
@curry69curry – Thank you for your compliment
The second photo of you two, you just can’t hide your feelings, but rightfully so. Tawn looks like such a lovely, lively person. I can just tell he was trying to cheer you up. He always looks so happy in all of your photos.