The way back

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The road back is a long one. I made my way to krabi Airport by scooter, then minivan, after I turned it in. Had a good flight to Bangkok and found my way to the city link rail. I had booked a hostel in the (new) city center. After walking the final kilometer, I found these luxurious beds (pic).

I checked out the city at night and, I must say, I like it better than the previous time. The hustle and bustle is a little more.. Sedated. There's night markets. The smog is not nearly as bad. The pretty lights give the city a new and interesting perspective. I followed the largest road in the world for quite a bit and returned by skytrain. The street is full of small stands, but also ginormous shopping malls and plaza's. A few buildings had impressive names on the walls, with expensive cars in the parking lot. Christmas music bares from speakers, that are cleverly hidden throughout the area. The hedge is dressed better than most Christmas trees I know..



Next day: shopping. I won't bore you with the details, but I found that the enormous pratunam market, that I planned my hostel close to, was mostly a clothing thing and didn't have much to bring home. I read up on markets again. Most of them are night markets, but there's a few others. Chatanuk market is the biggest market in the world, but it's a weekend market. The internet says there's a smaller market on weekdays too, so.. Let's see. It took me another ride on the sky train and a long walk, to find out, they only sell flowers :/. But there's 3 buildings nearby, that are supposed to have stalls, indoor. First one. Only furniture and decorations. Second one. 3 or 4 floors with all kinds of junk. Upscale antiques to aquaria. Took an hour, found nothing of interest.Third one. Same thing, but bigger. Only one floor though. Got a few knick-nacks, because I was running out of time. Found one more market close by and walked there.

This is a good time to mention how much time it costs to get to places. Just crossing the street requires you to find a stairs and walkway, or (when available) wait a couple of minutes at a traffic light for both sides of the road. I spent 45 minutes Getting from where I was, just before a T-junction, on the left side, to the far side of the horizontal part of the T, because I thought I had to cross it from the right side of the road instead of the left and had to double back. Incidentally, it was a food market.



Bought a ticket to the metro to get to another shopping location. Got out, walked around. Turns out this is also a night Market and there's nothing during the day. Onwards!



My final destination was a the BKS center. An huge indoor shopping mall with several floors, not too far from my hostel. It has crafts, clothing, electronics, food, banks, you name it. I finally found what I was looking for an hurried back to the hostel to pick up my backpack, and on to the rail link train. I added a map with my travels trough Bangkok, as part of the whole way back to amsterdam.



The airport gave me some trouble. I was all standing ready for the security theater show when they would not allow my powerbank (50k mAh listed. There's a local policy stating you can't bring one over 32). I'm pretty sure it won't even get to half that when I bought it, and after 5 years, I think it goes with half of that. But yeah, no arguing with airport officials.. If you were wondering. On the flight in, it was on my backpack, in checked luggage. Had totally forgotten about it, actually. There was some sign saying powerbanks should be in you cabin luggage, so I thought I'd oblige this time... Sigh. Next problem was a little slip of paper they added to my passport on the way here. I was supposed to fill it out, but hadn't. The customs official sent me away, instead of borrowing me a pencil, (so I could do the 5 lines of data while he worked with the next person). A little less zen than when I started, got in line a second time and had no trouble getting trough.



I write this from gate 47 in Hong Kong, where I still have to wait 1h30 for the gate to open. I expect no further events of note, so unless I feel really inspired or get some nice photos from others to share, I guess I call this the final chapter 😊



Thanks for your attention and see you .. Places 😊

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Photos

The only photo where you can see how I look in BKK
*very stealtily*