We've arrived!

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Well. What a long first day of travelling. Never have I had a weirder experience and my body clock is going into spasm at the moment.

Emma and I set off on our travels from Bromley at 7am on the 22nd and arrived at Gatwick with plenty of time to spare... So organised, it seemed. We thought, "brilliant, we're actually alright for once"... But it turns out we spoke too soon. Being the clutzes that we are, of course we both booked the different flights, me booking London-Stockholm and Emma booking Stockholm-Bangkok; completely forgetting that booking separately meant that we were not able to go through transit from one flight to another but we had to pick up our bags and then check in again!

And of course... We only left 2 hours to do this... Oh wait, after calling Norwegian air, they said we had to check in an hour before our second flight, leaving only an hour from landing...... Hold on a second, our flight at Gatwick has been delayed 40 minutes?!?! You have to be joking. This left 20 minutes to collect luggage and check in again, otherwise we wouldn't be leaving Sweden until Thursday!!! What a pavlova.

Being the gentleman that I am, I quickly sent Emma off to check in whilst I chilled waiting for our luggage to come out. It finally came and I sprinted to our new departure gate. We were too late. Baggage check-in was closed. But, all was not lost. We scampered towards our gate in complete optimism that somehow we were going to get on this flight.

I ran down the first-class passport queue - wasn't waiting for around for those queuing peasants - and somehow didn't even talk to the security guard, but he just pointed as if knowing completely what was going on (this is the passport control before security). Excellent, just skipped about 100 people. We must have run faster to security than a Thai man runs for his morning Pad Thai - what are the chances, we're in Thailand (BANTER).



On getting to security, about another 15 people kindly let us jump the queue in front of them.... Oh you must remember, we didn't check our bags in, so we are carrying our huge backpacks and hand luggage, looking like complete buffoons. We chucked everything into the x-ray machine and of course, our bags needed a check - helpful when you have 4 minutes until boarding stops. The guards went through our bags and with no word of a lie, I showed them my pocket knife (which is definitely big enough to cause damage) and they said "that's fine sir... But we need to take your sun cream". Right.....

We finally boarded, suncreamless and shampooless, but thank G-d I had my pocket knife.

We then set off on an extremely boring flight to Thailand, where the films were all old but it was the comfiest 'cheap' airline I have ever been on. Definitely recommend Norwegian air if you need to save money. I somehow managed to make notes on half of Chemistry AS-level and sleep for 3 hours or so. Poor Emsy couldn't sleep, but no worries, I could and that's all that matters really...

Finally after 22 hours travelling (or 14 hours travelling without time difference) we arrived at Bangkok airport. We were in Thailand. Being the adventurers that we are we decided to take the skyrail into the city instead of getting a taxi, inevitably forgetting that we arrived at morning rush-hour and so after an uninteresting 12 hour flight, we were stuck on a tiny, cramped train shvitzing our nachas off.

Half an hour later and we were in Central Bangkok. We booked our first night in the cheapest hotel ever which is surprisingly pleasant, but the price probably reflects the stone bed we have to sleep on - the hardest thing ever. Naturally we wanted to get out and explore as soon as possible, so we had showers upon arrival of our humble abode and fell straight to sleep.

And that concludes day 1.

I miss you all already. I'm sure there will plenty more funny stories to come!

Love Tobela xxxx

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Comments

[victorian67]

A very warm welcome to you from Luxembourg !
Enjouy your travels ! Karim