Bangkok to Bahrain

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Our final day in Thailand. Half a day really. We found a park on the map that wasn’t too far out of the way from the route to the airport, so we spent the morning there. Getting there wasn’t trivial, the streets of Bangkok are great for people who love a difficult puzzle! We again encountered the inability of Google Maps to keep up with reality, things like telling us to stay in the 4^th of 5 lanes and continue straight, when there were actually 7 or 8 lanes, each going a different direction, none of which was straight. Frustrating!

But we did manage to reach the park, eventually, and had a relaxing picnic breakfast. The Chatuchak park is really nice. It’s a very large green lung in the middle of the Bangkok megapolis. There are walking and biking paths, benches and picnic tables, trees, ponds, grass, and what looked like teaching gardens with people working in small plots of vegetables, rice, lotus ponds and flowers. The background noises were of birds and children, not traffic. Altogether very relaxing. Just walking in the park helped me wind down after the drive here from the hotel. We sat on the grass, in the shade of a tree by a pond and ate our sandwiches, just relaxing.

After our picnic we walked through the park to the Chatuchak market, basically a mall building with an indoor market, lots of little shops selling clothing, gifts, kitchen utensils, some food stalls and small restaurants. And outside the building was a gigantic pet market. They sold fish of all types, hamsters, puppies, birds and all the paraphernalia that goes with them. Even live crickets and mealworms (not sure if those were for animal or human consumption. Perhaps both).

We wandered around the market for a while, looking for something interesting, got ourselves the mandatory green iced tea and iced coffee, and headed back to the car.

We left with plenty of time to spare, giving ourselves an extra half hour in addition to Google’s time estimate to deal with traffic. We should have left earlier! Google, in its infinite wisdom, navigated us into the mother of all traffic jams in a narrow alley that only leads into a multi-story parking lot! Each car was checked, paid, and entered, while we stood all but completely immobile for 20 minutes. We were getting really worried that we’d miss our flight because of that!

Finally, after cutting off a few cars (and even a couple mopeds) we managed to extricate ourselves from the parking lot entrance with our nerves in tatters and got onto the toll road.

We made it to the airport, got a little lost there (why have things like signs to direct you when it’s so much more fun to guess?) but eventually found the car rental return office and returned the car with no trouble.

Then we found that the entire departures floor had no bathrooms! No, you want to pee or change clothes before your flight? Check in first! Luckily there were hardly any flights going out so check-in was quick. The check-in counter actually waited for me instead of me waiting in line! That’s new!

There was a very large group of kids checking in to the flight, all in uniform with dark blue blazers, and many of them with various disabilities. Turns out they’re from the Thai Paralympic team on their way to games in Bahrain, and they’ll be joining us on our flight. Actually they'll be filling most of the plane. Go team! Best of luck to them! Unfortunately, the drawback to this is that there were a few dozen kids in wheelchairs who had to be helped onto the plane before everyone else boarded. And I don’t think any airline is really prepared for such a scenario. The result was that boarding and take off were delayed by about an hour.

But here we are, finally on the plane and in the air. Next stop – Manama!

The flight was uneventful and pleasant enough and we got off the plane quickly and with no trouble. Then we found that we don't have to leave the airport (not what we were led to understand before!) We'd reserved a hotel room in Manama for the night, but upon landing found that in order to leave the airport we'd have to pay for a PCR test and stay in quarantine until the results are back, i.e. we'd miss our flight! Add to that our luggage is being transferred directly to our plane tomorrow morning, we don't have access to it. And it's way too late to cancel the reservation. Nothing too it but get a room at the airport hotel. Not cheap (outrageous by the Thai standards we'd become accustomed to), but we already did the security checks and have our boarding passes. We'll leave our room tomorrow an hour before the flight and go directly to the gate.

Can I summarize our trip in a sentence? I’ll give it a go: Thailand is beautiful, interesting, tasty and friendly, we definitely recommend it, but do NOT drive in Bangkok!

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