The Abu-Dhabi – Bangkok flight was nice and pleasant. No delays, no bumps, food was good and in-flight entertainment did the job – it didn’t feel like over 7hours long flight.
We’ve arrived to Bangkok at aprox 6.50am local time, and as it usually are – first major bummer was the immigration check-up. There was no problems with the documents, but the queue was enormous – there was 15 open desks and waiting time to each was some 60 mins. Normally it wouldn’t bother us, but we were travelling for the last 16h, so… Anyway, they passed us through (btw, r-tard immigration agent stapled some sort of paper to the back of US VISA page in my passport, which is not something one would expect to see.
Anyhow, because the above taken so much time, our bags were already waiting on us on the belt, so we were ready to hit the hotel. The only problem was – it was 8am – and according to our reservation – normal checking time was 14h00. Oh well, fck it – let’s go anyway (a guy who was sitting next to Monika on our Abu DHabi flight said he’s been to the hotel we had booked before, and they never made any problems with early check in provided they had free rooms).
We went towards the taxi stand, and of course straight away was approached by a guy, who offered ‘a lift to our hotel’ (for a fixed fee of 900Baht). I remember reading that this is usually an overpriced type of scam and it’s better to go to a normal meter-type taxi – which we did. Journey took some 25 mins – and was 350Baht. Happy days!
Our hotel in Bangkok is located just outside the City centre (as it tourned out later it’s 6 stations on the metro or 15 mins in the taxi).
Check in went really smooth, the receptionist was very sorry that the mini bar wasnt ready in the room they have for us and offered a new room tomorrow, or a minibar to be set up afternoon. It took us some time to explain that we didnt expect a minibar, actually we didnt expect they’ll have a room for ready at 9am anyway! She apologized again ( for God knows what) , we apologiezed for arriving way too early and went to our 11th floor room.
Quick bath,and to bed for few hours.
We got up around 1pm and left to explore the city. The weather is nice – warm (aprox 28C), no wind and very humid. The sky is covered in clouds, so there is no sun really, hence all the photos are kind of crap. Oh well.
The moment we’ve left hotel a guy approached us offering to drive us around the city for 40Baht (1euro = 41 baht, metro ticket for 1 person from city centre to our hotel is 29Baht single pp).
I’ve ready in the city guide, that this is a common practice (private drivers) and a very good idea on the weekend (apparently traffic on normal days is just to heavy to move around in a car so public transport is a better option).
We’ve asked him to take us to few places that looked nice on the map (including somewhere where we could make arrangements for the rest of our stay).
The outcome of it is that instead of going to 2 places (as we planned before) we’ve planned next 10 days in following 4 locations for much cheaper if I’d book it over the internet:
Tuesday, 9.11 – Night train to Surat Thani+boat to Ko Samui Island.
few nights there (i cant remember exact days, have them written down)- and transfer to Muat Krabi,
few nights there and boat transfer to Ko phi phi,
few nights there and boat transfer to Phuket
few nights there and transfer by Plane to Bangkok (on the 21.11 midday).
Return flight Dublin – 21.11 – 9Pm or so.
Anyway, I’m running low on batter on the netbook I’m writing the above on, so I’ll wrap it up and finally post the link for all the photos taken.
but before that few things on that city:
1. It’s very crowded. There are people everywhere (even though it is SUnday today and apparently pretty much everything is closed).
2. There is a huge disproportion in people’s wealth – you can see luxury hotels on one side of the street – and ruins of resi houses just across the road.
3. City is very polluted. The air is heavy and not very clean
4. There are taxis and tuk-tuks (3 wheel moto-taxis) everywhere.
5. People are VERY VERY nice and helpful (but sometimes very hard to understand 🙂
6. For some reason telephone and power cables are not in the ground but are just hanging from the poles – and by hanging I mean they are really low – sometimes less than 2 meteres from the the ground level.
Anyway – one more glance at our hotel:
Rest of the photos HERE.
I’ll update soon.
mic.
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