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Published: January 30th 2012
Panting and frantic, we anxiously looked between Donna’s watch and the Air Asia check-in man, who simply giggled and said ‘calm down, calm down’, much to our disappointment it wasn’t in a scouse (Liverpudlian) accent.
But let’s rewind 3 and a half hours…we sat waiting for the minibus to pick us up chatting with the owner of our guesthouse, arriving 20 minutes late we weren’t too bothered as the journey to Krabi airport was only 2 hours or so from Koh Lanta, we had plenty of time. We stopped to pick up a Thai lady in Klong Dao (the beach just north of Long beach) and we were on our way happily to the car ferry. We knew there was something wrong straightaway when the queue for the car ferry was tailed right the way back with at least 30 cars/vans ahead of us. After a couple of minutes waiting and then some high pitched talking on his mobile phone, the van driver suddenly pulls out of the traffic and goes back the way we have come. We thought he was taking us to another car ferry, but no, he was picking someone else up!
By the time we
got back into the queue for the car ferry, a lot more cars had joined it – why the extra passenger wasn’t just put on a motorbike and sent to us in the queue is another matter, oh, sorry, that would involve common sense wouldn’t it? So we spent the good part of an hour slowly creeping forward towards the ferry which was struggling to cope with the volume of traffic. By the time we got to the front of the queue of traffic, we were crapping ourselves (now that is putting it politely!) and started to ask the driver in our pidgeon Thai ‘Sanam Bin, sip-et?’ (Airport, 11?), along with pointing at Donna’s watch but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. Our flight was at 12:15, we had already checked in but hadn’t been able to print our boarding passes, so we had until 11:30am to get to the airport in time. The lady sitting in front of us was also on our flight, so we weren’t alone!
The queue for the second car ferry was just as long, the only good thing was that this ferry was a lot larger than the first and they could
fit a lot more cars on it. This one was still struggling to cope and it went so, so slowly! Finally on the mainland at 11am, we reserved ourselves to missing the flight and Donna was frantically racking her brain for the times of the flights in the afternoon which we undoubtedly would have to fork out a huge amount of money for. Now although we are used to the driving in Asia, this was one of the scariest, looking through the fingers journeys we have ever experienced. The van driver decided he WOULD get us to the airport on time and proceeded to drive at 100 miles/hr, swerving in and out of the traffic, overtaking on blind bends all the while driving one handed while chatting on his phone! We are positive a couple of times he went onto two wheels when rounding the bends. With crazy Michael Schumacher driver we started to think we could actually make it…our hearts were pumping like mad and the adrenalin was rushing…we started to form a plan. Neil would run ahead with just our smarter-than-us phone to print out our boarding passes (for those who don’t know, you hold up your phone
which has a previously saved barcode on to a machine which then automatically prints out your boarding passes) which would by-pass the security check and Donna and Dave would follow with the bags through the security check and scanner.
Guess what? Yes, the machine was broken! Now this brings us nicely back to the beginning of our blog…we were 15 seconds…yes, 15 SECONDS away from the check-in closing and we made it to the desk frantic, anxious and panting and handed our passports over to the giggling Air Asia check-in man. Honestly, that has NEVER happened to us before…in over 5 years of travelling we have never been that close to missing a flight!
Taking a few seconds to calm down and go to the toilet - which you can imagine, the anxiety really did a number on our insides 😉, we headed through security to the Departures area only to find out the plane was delayed anyway (not that it ever makes a difference with when the check-in closes). We sat down and Dave realised he had lost his boarding pass…cue more running back to the security check where luckily they had his boarding pass. It took
until the flight arrived for us to calm down (and another few trips to the toilet!). Finally on the plane, everyone again contended with the silly Air Asia seating people apart, which must have delayed the plane by another 20 minutes while people swapped seats. The cabin crew donned their flashing Santa hats and fluffy reindeer antlers and we were away! The flight was like we were on a charter flight back to Sweden…it was full of statuesque, blond(e) and bronzed Swedes! It was unbelievable.
Arriving in one piece into Bangkok, we headed to the airport express train to take us into the city. After we had checked into the hotel with the grumpiest receptionist ever - they demanded a 1000 baht deposit for the key (that’s about £20!) and before you ask they did it to everyone not just because they thought we were dodgy or anything. We then headed out to take care of the first thing on our list – haggling with a Bangkok tailor for some suits for Dave. We headed to a tailors we had previously used and managed to agree on a price and timescale for the suits. We then caught the skytrain
to MBK, our favourite shopping centre in Bangkok (mostly because it’s a Cheap Charlie place!). While Donna had her hair highlighted and cut, Neil and Dave went off in search of new jeans; once the shopping and the hair do-ing was out of the way we made the obligatory stop at the food court in MBK…we love it there, it’s so cheap and the food is excellent! We then headed back to the hotel to get showered and changed before heading out for a couple of drinks.
The next day we were up relatively early to take advantage of the fantastic buffet breakfast the hotel had (although the night before, we did have to phone Reception to find out how we actually got the breakfast we had pre-paid for!). There was cereal, juice, fried rice, fried veggies and chicken, ham, bacon, eggy bread, potatoes, toast, jam, marmalade….well you get the idea. Of course, being the hardened travellers (or greedy buggers, your choice!) we are, we managed around 4 servings of almost everything to Dave’s bowl of cornflakes and cup of tea!
We ventured outside to clear blue skies…wow, now that is a first for us in we don’t
know how many visits to Bangkok. We must have been to Bangkok about 40 times now and we have never seen blue skies. We headed out on the skytrain again to do some more shopping, the one thing we did notice was how polite the Thai people are when it comes to public transport. Unlike the rest of Asia, they actually wait for people to get off the train before trying to get on; it was all very civilised! We noticed as we were wandering around Bangkok that there were a much higher number of Chinese, Korean and Russian tourists than other nationalities (puzzlingly, there was no sign of the previously abundant Swedes) and there weren’t that many tourists around the Sukhumvit Road area but lots bargain hunting in MBK.
On our last day in Bangkok, we had to go and pick Dave’s suits up from the tailor. While we were waiting for him to try the suits on we came across the most obnoxious guy we have ever met. We casually started talking to him and he started banging on about how dangerous Thailand was (although he chose to live in Bangkok!) and how much safer Cambodia was.
We replied about being robbed in Cambodia along with a lot of other tourists…his reply? Well obviously it was our fault for staying in $10 a night places and not the $100 a night place he stays at which is in its own compound, he then went on to say - you see, that way you don’t need to see the locals apart from the ones who are there in the hotel to serve you! Ha, well sorry Mr Obnoxious but we actually travel to meet the locals! We just ended up ignoring him as his views got increasingly more and more offensive. We couldn’t get out there fast enough!
We headed back to the airport on the train, grabbed some food and then checked in for our flight. Dave still had a few more hours to kill before his flight when we said our goodbyes. We were sad to be leaving and it had been great to see Dave and show him the sights.
Our next blog is coming soon…from a rather chilly viewpoint just before one of the largest celebrations in Asia. Can you guess where it is yet?
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Maria
non-member comment
Wow
That's a one heck of a experience for you guys but what can we do, when we travel to difference countries or places expect the an expected and hope for the best that your itinerary will be somehow correct. There will be a lot of unforeseen events that will effect your travel but it will make it more exciting and challenging. http://www.travetel.com