Journey Bangkok to Sydney

---

Saturday

Time for more travelling, today we leave Thailand and head for Perth, via Sydney.

Our flight is 18.25, so we have a little time earlier in the day, to do a couple of things.

We packed, went down to the lobby area to leave our luggage at the concierge and pay our bill at reception. The service as always at the hotel was excellent.

Our total bill at the hotel for the four nights was TB 10,117, which works out roughly £25 per person per night. Not bad for a five star hotel.

We had spotted a couple of places of interest along the road, the first being The Protestant cemetery. A cemetery created a number of years ago that allowed somewhere for foreigners that died in Bangkok to be buried. Protestant was probably stretching a point as we noticed Jewish gravestones, Indian and various other nationalities and religions.

Then we had spotted a temple called Rachsingkorn Royal Temple. We pottered around for a while around beautiful buildings, which we think was a monastery as well. We saw what we thought was a funeral taking place, so kept our distance and quietly wandered off.

The temple hadn't taken that long, so we decided to visit the Asiatique for something to eat.

Pasta Pizza caught our attention and seemed to fit the bill. We ordered a sphagetti carbonara and a deluxe pizza on offer with a free pitcher of Pepsi.
The meal was delicious and did definetely fill a space in our tummies, total cost TB 622 including drinks.

Then an amble back to the hotel, picked up our luggage and booked on the 2 o'clock river boat to Central pier at Saphin Taksin.

Made our way up to the rail station and bought a ticket to Phraya Thai, TB 32 each. We had to change at Siam and we negotiated this fairly easily as it was just across the platform.

From Phraya Thai we purchased the token for the train to the airport TB 42 each. Then a straight run through to the airport and a short journey into the terminal.

In the terminal we found Qantas, checked in and got rid of our main luggage.

Up to security and then Immigration which took a little while. We both needed coffee and a little something. The food court presented multiple options but we got coffee and some stuff from a donut place. One apple fritter, a honey donut and a chocalate rocky road thing. All very sticky and sugary, but of course wonderful.

Then on to the gate F5 until boarding the plane, which was due for take off at 1825.

The visit to Bangkok was really an interlude for us to break the journey from Cyprus to Australia. With only a few days we were only going to be able to do a small number of things and the weather stopped us a little bit.

However, we did have a very pleasant time. The Thai people are very courteous and polite. They will move out of your way to allow you to go first in many situations. The country is obviously poor, but there is little or no litter in public places for example. on the trains food and drink is not allowed to be eaten. The food was a great experience and neither of us had any tummy issues. One other major benefit is the value of the Pound against the Baht, which makes your money go even further.

The Qantas flight was a long nine hours, but the upside was that the Qantas flight was much better than the Emirates flight.

We arrived in Sydney and had filled in our landing cards, which when we proceeded through Passport control and Immigration with the various checks and a few questions we went straight through with no issues.

Our luggage was on the carousel by the time we got there and we made our way through to Qantas domestic and waited for our next flight from Sydney to Perth, which would take about four hours twenty minutes.

We had a coffee while waiting and tried out our prepaid credit card to purchase an adaptor plug, which worked with no problem.

Both of us had slept very little on the last flight and we hoped to catch up on this one.

The flight wasn't quite as full as the previous one but not too many empty seats. Pat slept for a while but I didn't.

This was a domestic flight so no passport control, we just had to collect our luggage.

Pat had booked a hotel in Perth the Kings Perth for a couple of nights, as we were then due to pick up a camper van for ten days on Tuesday and the hotel would give us a couple of days to adjust.

Pat had worked out that there was a local shuttle bus service from the airport that would get us near to the hotel and was AU$ 15 each.

We left the airport and found the bus stop. After waiting for a while we found out the bus didn't run on a Sunday afternoon.

So, decided to take a taxi as we were both pretty exhausted. There were loads of taxis and we checked on a rough price and were told journeys were all metered, but would be about AU$ 30.

The driver was quite chatty and we learned a few things about the area and so on.

Dropped off outside hotel with tip AU$ 35, and no hassle.

We checked in and were up in the room by 2.30. We showered and sorted ourselves out a bit, but were both a little hungry. THe plan was to try snd last as long as possible before sleeping so we could adust to local time.

We walked to the town centre and found a KFC and a burger joint. Enough to satisfy our current needs.

Back in the room for 4 o'clock.

---

Photos

DSC03959
Cemetery

DSC03961
Temple

DSC03960
Bangkok post box

DSC03966
Rocky road