Wandergliding: An Upside Down Rainbow

October 23^rd, 2024

Today I’m flying from Bangkok to a small city called Krabi located on the west side of the skinny isthmus on the south side of Thailand, with a population of around 33,000. It is a hub for travelling to the west or east side of the country to popular places like Phuket or Ko Samui, however, it is a gorgeous location in its own right.

I had a few extra hours to kill so I decided to check out the Royal Thai Airport Museum which was located on one side of the Don Mueang International Airport, which was not the airport that I flew into from Canada. The museum is not on the side of the airport where the terminal is located but the BTS, the elevated train system that complements the underground, had a station specifically for the museum. I planned on checking out the museum for a few hours and then back tracking around the airport on the BTS to get to the main terminal.

As I was about to exit the station, a transit worker asked me where I was going. “The air force museum” I responded. “It’s closed” he retorted. Hmm. Online it said it was open. Okay, well I’ll head to the airport super early I figured. On the train I looked online to see why the museum was closed. Turns out it was a holiday for a former king of Siam named Chulalongkorn. I’m glad I looked this up as this guy was an interesting dude to say the least. He was credited with modernizing Siam (the former name for Thailand) and was considered the “Greatest King of Siam and Thailand's History”. He reigned from 1868 until his death in 1910. But more interestingly he had four wives, five consorts and 143 concubines…yes you read that correctly, 143! He sired 32 sons and 44 daughters!!! This man was busy. So he was the reason that I couldn’t check out a bunch of cool planes at a museum…huh.

I loved the look of this "bird jet". This is a plane from a company called NokAir. Before arriving in Thailand, when I was researching plane tickets, I occasionally saw NokAir and I couldn't quite understand their logo. It looked like a smiling Chinese fortune cookie.

Here's the logo...now I see the beak, but without context, it does look weird doesn't it?

My plane was delayed by an hour and a half, and we took off at 5:10 pm, the time we were supposed to land in Krabi. This however allowed me to witness a very cool phenomenon. En route, there were some amazing cloud formations but as we approached Krabi, there was an spectacular sunset visible out the other side of the plane. However, on my side, with some rain falling, there was initially a couple of straight up and down rainbow-like lines which morphed into a faint rainbow that was below us…upside down!

Flying out of Bangkok:

Awesome cloud formation, that thing is probably more than 10,000 feet tall.

Popcorn clouds:

A little girl in the window seat opposite from me had a phone case that was refracting the sunlight onto the ceiling...felt like we were in a disco.

The beginning of the rainbow:

The other side:

If you know how a rainbow happens, you need a few ingredients. The sun needs to be behind where you are looking with rain in front of you. If the Earth wasn’t in the way, you could actually see a 360-degree circle of a rainbow. I saw a ¾’s circle of a rainbow one morning in Victoria from my 11^th storey apartment building many years ago which super cool. In this case, the fact that we were at 25-30,000 feet meant that the Earth was not in the way but from the angles involved, I saw a very faint rainbow that was upside down…amaze-balls!

It's hard to see as I don't have a very good camera on my phone, but trust me, there is an upside down rainbow there.