Day 3: Flying with Nuns :)


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Asia » Thailand » Central Thailand » Bangkok
April 6th 2014
Published: June 2nd 2014
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London to Bangkok

My flight route to Bangkok

Finnair Flight AttendantsFinnair Flight AttendantsFinnair Flight Attendants

Don't they look like nuns
Next hiccup of the trip. I had told the hostel that I would leaving early and they assured me someone would be waiting for me. Surprise, no one was there. I left my sheets and key at the door and lost my key deposit 😞. Flight path for today would take me from London to Helsinki to Bangkok. Taking the tube from central London to Heathrow only costs 4 pounds and takes about an hour or so.

First flight was with British Airways and was uneventful 3 hours to Helsinki. I had a few hours in Helsinki and I decided to count that as having visited Helsinki (Take That Christine). Airport in Helsinki is very close to the city so wouldn't take that long to get into the city. I will do an actual visited to Scandinavia later on. I did some wandering around the airport and charged up all my devices while waiting for my flight.

Flight was with FINNAIR. I will say FINNAIR is a wonderful airline. Charging ports at each seat and full entertainment systems as well as good meals (fish based). The flight attendants are also nice and helpful. The only comment I would make
Feet in SandalsFeet in SandalsFeet in Sandals

How I walked around Bangkok. Sleeping sandals were ok to walk around but will need formal sandals next time.
is that the flight attendants are dressed like nuns 😉. Just a comment, they are wonderful people irregardless on how they are dressed.

This would be the longest flight since I started traveling, 10 hours 20 minutes. My body chemistry was all out of sync and it got worse as we travelled east. I could not sleep that well on this flight even thought I would be getting in at 7AM local time in Bangkok. I watched parts of various movie starting with Frozen and 12 years a slave. I reminded myself to finish watching them some day.

I watched the plane's progress across the Asian continent on my video screen and I wondered what Thailand would be like. I had never been to Thailand before and it was a tossup between Thailand and Vietnam when I had to choose. To be honest I chose Thailand because the flight into Thailand was cheaper than to Vietnam.

Flight got in early to Suvarnabhumi airport at around 6:30AM which was almost 45 minutes early. I stepped off the air conditioned plane into the mildly air conditioned airport. A quick check of the weather told me it was 40 degrees and 100% humidity. This was stunning to a Canadian used to the cold and snow. Immigration was pain free and they didn't ask too many questions. After collecting my luggage I stopped at the DTAC store which sells tourists sims. Cellphone service is very cheap compared to North America. I paid only 300 Bahts for unlimited internet and about 30 minutes of calling back to Canada and almost unlimited calling within Thailand. The exchange rate is about 30 Bahts to the Canadian dollar so I effectively paid $10 Canadian for all this.

Bangkok has an excellent train into the city and it only costs 50 cents Canadian or 15 Bahts. It was air conditioned but I could see the waves of heat from the city. The train took about 30 minutes to get into the city and I enjoyed people watching and seeing the city as the train sped through. My hostel, We Bangkok had given me very specific instructions on how to find them and they were good instructions. One quick train change at Siam station and I was Chong Non station. As soon as I stepped out of the station I was hit with 40 degree weather. WOW, WOW, WOW, it actually hurt. I was sweating buckets immediately and I didn't have any water so I was in rough shape by the time I got to the hostel.

We Bangkok had excellent reviews on hostelbookers and this tipped my choice because there are a lot hostel choices in the city. I was too early to check in but they let me dump my luggage in storage and rest a bit in the hostel. After resting on the couch in the common room I went out to explore the city. I wanted to do some shopping so I headed to a recommended shopping mall. The MBK shopping center is large and has everything from cheap clothes to high end restaurants. I just did a lot of browsing and did not buy anything. I found a post office to mail out some post cards and went looking for a restaurant. I found a nice one inside the mall and sat down to my meal of spicy seafood with rice. It was a nice meal and only cost me $3 Canadian.

I took the skytrain back to the hostel after eating. FYI Bangkok is a very busy city but seems to be organized. The skytrain and bus system works well and is affordable. If you are going to be travelling to a few places it is cheaper to get a full day pass and will save you the trouble of buying tickets for each trip.

Getting back to my hostel I was jet lagged so I took a nap that stretched into several hours of sleeping. My bed was on the floor but the mattress was comfortable and the room was air conditioned. I woke up in the afternoon and met my first roommate. A German guy who had just arrived from Nepal. He was shipping back a lot of cold weather stuff to Germany because he would be Asia for a while and didn't need it. One of the problems with going to a bunch of different countries you end up with clothes and accessories that are not suitable.

I wanted to see the Royal Palace as well so I headed out again. After getting some advise from the hostel I was on my way. Before that thought I went across the street to the 7 Eleven. 7 Elevens are everywhere in Bangkok and are a godsend to travelers. You can recharge your data plan, stock up on water or just duck in to escape the heat for a few minutes. I stocked up on 2 1 liter bottles of water and than went to the train station. Using the instructions from the hostel I took the train station to the docks and than took the river boat which is essentially a bus system on the water.

It is less than a dollar to go up and down the river. Not a lot of seats for the number of people on the boat but I got to the Royal Palace safely. I kept drinking lots of water and kept myself hydrated as I walked through a market which was adjacent to the Royal Palace. It was about 10 minutes from the docks to the entrance of the Royal Palace. You will not get lost trying to find the Royal Palace. It is enormous and there are signs everywhere directing you where to go.

There is a tour that you can take but I was very dehydrated at this point and did not want to stay in the sun much longer. I wandered the grounds a bit longer before heading back to the boat. I was not feeling well at this point and even after drinking another liter of water I was still feeling dizzy. I had experienced this before and it was the beginning of heat exhaustion. I knew a cold shower back the hostel would help a lot. The boat arrived and I got on fighting to stay upright. I hung onto the railing as tightly as I could as the heat washed over me. At some point I fainted and the only thing that kept me from hitting the floor was the fact I was holding on so tightly. I splashed more water on my head and managed to stay up until I got back at the hostel. After a long cold shower and a lot more water I felt a lot better. I took a nap and this point because I needed to recharge my batteries before I did anything else that day.

It was evening by the time I woke up and went down to the common room. I was feeling much better but still groggy and did some blogging on my netbook as I chatted with the people around me. It was an interesting crowd in the hostel. Starting with a French couple who were living on a few hundred Euros a month as they traveled Asia. The rest of the room consisted of some ladies from California who were avid surfers and some guys from Norway. Most people were surprised I would only be in Bangkok for a few days because most of them were spending weeks if not months in Asia. I had to explain that I was seeing a lot of countries in a short period of time so I had to really move. We chatted about where we came from, what we were doing in Bangkok and where we were going. I do a lot of my trip planning by my talks with other travelers. So I will need to visit Laos, Malaysia, Singapore and China sometime in the future.

I wasn't planning to go out that night but the guys from Norway suggested we go out to this restaurant they heard of. So our group of 7 left and wandered the street until we reached the restaurant, which was closed. We wandered the streets of Bangkok for awhile. I will say Bangkok at night is an interesting place to wandered about. Warning do not go out at night unless you are in a group. It is just safer. We tried a few other restaurants but everything was closed and we figured out that it was because the Kings Holiday. We finally found a mobile restaurant that was located in an alleyway. Not much was there just the cooking stove and a bunch of chairs and tables. We ordered and the food was good and only cost a few dollars. The beers were affordable as well and we ended up chatting and eating for quite some time.

It was well past midnight by the time we got back to the hostel and I was glad I was in a group because I had honestly didn't know how to navigate the streets of Bangkok back to the hostel. So that was first day in Bangkok, tomorrow it was either the wolfpack trail or a Bangkok food tour.


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Ronald Mcdonald is actually scary in Bangkok


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