Mark and I were on our way to Bhutan for eight days and knew there really wasn’t much nightlife. We were told once we were at our hotel for the night, we would be staying in. So we figured we would each bring two bottles of wine to enjoy to after at the end of the long days as we assumed there may not be wine stores in Bhutan.
So I had my two bottles already packed in my luggage and Mark figured he would pick up two bottles at duty free at the Bangkok airport. We were a little worried that the Duty Free stores would not be open at 5am, but lucky for us they were. So Mark selected two really nice French bottles and off we went.
The first wine disaster:
While Mark was in the men’s room, he placed the bag of wine bottles on the floor and hung up his carry on bags on a hook. All of a sudden, the hook buckled from the weight and his bags came crashing down on the wine. Mark calmly walked out of the men’s room carrying the smashed wine bag (in the sealed plastic bag from duty free) and showed me a bag full of red liquid. I didn’t know what I was looking at (partially as I was still half asleep as Mark and I were out drinking in Bangkok till 12:30am and only slept for 3 hours). Then he told me the story. I asked, “did both bottles break or just one?” He confirmed they both broke. It was a sad processional to the garbage can where Mark took a ceremonial drink (from the sealed bag) before tossing the broken wine bottles (and wasted wine) in the trash.
Did I just break two bottles of wine?
Let me try to drink some of the wine, wait…the bag is sealed.
Goodbye Wine…
So the next decision was…do you buy more wine or just deal with the two bottles I packed? Mark decided he would get two more bottles as we had 7 nights. So back we went to the wine store. The wine store clerks looked at us as we were only there 30 minutes earlier buying wine, so I showed them the photo of the broken wine and us throwing it away and they understood.
Mark decided instead of getting two nice bottles, he would split the losses and get one nice bottle and one simple bottle. I kept saying no need to get two more or just get one, but he wanted to get two. It’s a little ironic that he decided to split the wine purchases this way because…
The second wine disaster:
After we took off in Bangkok, Thailand, landed in Kolkata, India, took off in India and arrived in Bhutan (plus some turbulence in the air), we got off the airplane and started to walk on the tarmac. We had to walk about 5 minutes on the tarmac to the immigration office before we were to go through customs. Mark and I were talking and all of a sudden I hear a crash and turn around. I couldn’t believe it as the wine bag he was carrying was on the tarmac and I could see more red liquid. Mark looked stunned. I said something out loud like, “are you kidding me? Did you just trip or something?” Mark replied, “nope…I just dropped the bag – didn’t trip just dropped it.” We both went over to inspect the bag and check for casualties. Looking for the silver lining, one bottle survived which was good, and I tried to at least focus on that, but Mark was so upset (and I can’t blame him), as he was so upset that he broke three bottles of wine in less than 5 hours of transit. I even tried to say we saved all those empty calories, and he laughed at me and said I guess that’s a positive.
Mark was trying to smile it off but he was quite upset
Checking to see if he broke one or both bottles
When he looked at the bottle that survived, he was bummed as the expensive bottle broke and the cheaper bottle survived, but in the end, when we opened it and drank it, it still was a nice French wine.
We still had to walk another couple minutes on the tarmac to reach the immigration office and the bag was leaking red wine the whole way as this time the broken glass punctured the bag allowing the wine to leak. It almost looked like blood leaking out.
Throwing away the last of the broken wine at the Bhutan airport
When we finally reached the immigration office, we found a police officer and showed him the bag and were trying to find a trash can to throw it away, but there wasn’t one. We showed him and told him what happened as he spoke English and he told us to take it inside to throw away. He tried to tell him it would make a mess and spill wine all over the steps, floor and entry way and he didn’t seem to care. Finally he got it and got called someone over to deal with it and we were on our way to immigration.
So three broken wine bottles in 5 hours and we arrived!
Hello Bhutan!
**As Mark and were discussing this wine situation, he said I have to write about this (which I really wanted to, but also wanted to respect his privacy for the sad incident). He felt this was such a Sisyphean incident, and I had no idea what that meant. He recalled this story about Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill and being cursed by never being able to succeed. I hadn’t heard the story and looked it up. I wanted to copy it below for others:
As a punishment for his trickery, King Sisyphus was made to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill. Before he could reach the top, the massive stone would always roll back down, forcing him to begin again. The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for King Sisyphus due to his hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus himself. Zeus accordingly displayed his own cleverness by enchanting the boulder into rolling away from King Sisyphus before he reached the top which ended up consigning Sisyphus to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration. Thus it came to pass that pointless or interminable activities are sometimes described as Sisyphean.