Bangkok

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Arrival

We took off from Heathrow at around 12 noon Saturday (UK time) and arrived in Bangkok at about 7:00am Sunday morning. With our baggage collected, we set off in search of a taxi. Now, I'd done plenty of research before heading to Thailand, and many people had told me about the bangkok airport taxi scam. I knew I should be paying around 300bhat to get to Bangkok City on a metered taxi, and with this in mind I headed for the meter taxi desk.

After telling the woman where we wanted to go, she hailed over a driver for us. I tried to ask her how much it would cost, but she just said "ask him", and pointed at our driver. Fine. As he put our bags into the boot, and we stepped intot he car, I asked if he would put the meter on..."700bhat" he said. "Ohh, erm...I'll give you 500". "No, no. Fixed price 700bhat" he said, as he took the ticket out of my hand that the lady had given me. Crafty, as this was my record of the car and driver that was just about to rip me off. Oh, I thought, maybe things have changed since other people were here. Maybe it is all fixed price journies now. After an 11 hour plane journey, quite frankly, I couldn't be bothered to argue and agreed the fee of 700bhat to get us to Bangkok. Like an idiot.

40 minutes later...

Talk about jumping in at the deep-end! There's no other way to describe it, Bangkok city centre is mental. It a huge mish-mash of crazy taxi drivers, 1,000's of motorbikes, street vendors and tuk-tuks all seeming trying to mow you down.

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