Arriving in Thailand

All went well with the flight to Thailand; we arrived at Mumbai airport with a taxi driver who had obviously never been there before. We had to shout at him to exit the freeway to get to the airport, despite the fact that it was well sign posted. When he had to choose between departures and arrivals, he was totally baffled. I’m not sure if it was simply a case that he didn’t know the difference or more worryingly he was a taxi driver who couldn’t read!

The airport was fine, the usual price hike for food and beverages, but not much to see or do once you went through immigration. Despite the fact that it was air-conditioned there were a few mosquitoes flying around. Mal was in fear of them, he didn’t need to add to the numerous bites that plagued him from the previous night. Of course there were no shops to buy repellent or pharmacy for antihistamines, in fact there weren’t any real shops, just a few stalls along the walls selling trinkets at 100 times the price compared to the street! We flew with Air India, not wanting to fly with the unorganized and inconsistent Jet Lite again. They were a nice airline to fly with, it was a reasonably short flight of four hours and they managed to serve drinks, snacks, a meal and wet wipes- impressive in this day and age of ‘no frills’ flying. And we actually found a decent deal through expedia.com, they were cheaper than booking directly with the airline website or with an Indian travel agent- ha no surprises there!!

We momentarily paniced on arrival when we saw long queues for the visa; they wanted something like $40 in Thai bath, along with photos and lot’s of forms! What?!! We never had to do this before and it says nothing about it in the guidebook, but everyone from our flight and lots more were crowding on top of each other to get a form and enter the queue. We eventually discovered we didn’t need this visa, although it didn’t specifically say ‘Ireland exempt’ anywhere, we figured it out.

Next were the quarantine forms, we picked one up and it asked the usual questions like have you had stomach-ache, diarrhoea, fever, tiredness, fatigue, bla bla bla in the last few weeks? We could have answered yes to half the list until they saw our passports and told us we didn't need the questionnaire as we were Irish- little did they know that we were probably carrying more germs then anybody else on the flight! We contemplated having ourselves and baggage thrown into quarantine for a few days, just for health and safety and the good of the country, but obviously we just nodded and moved swiftly ahead.

Siam Square- Bangkok

A free shuttle bus brought us to the bus stand and a bright new yellow air-conditioned bus (no. 556) deposited us to the top of Khao San road for the grand total of 35 bhat each ($1)- the taxi’s were proposing 500B- I think we scored a major bargain!

Bangkok

It was early when we carried our rucksacks down Khao San road- the busy back packer area is obviously not a morning lover with hardly a soul on the streets. We swung a left down the Suzie Walking Street alley, checked out a few guesthouses and dejectedly noted that standards were low in the budget option, on the next road we found a decent room for $10 a night with a massage spa below of the legitimate kind (this room didn't work out to well in the end- but I don;t want to taint our Bangkok blog with further tails of bed bugs!). Our first impressions of Thailand on arriving are: wow it’s so clean! It's not until you leave India that you realise how extreamly dirty it is, I wish we could say otherwise, but that’s the harsh reality. When we were in India we took it all with a pinch of salt, but now that we're out and in beautiful Thailand we see the difference.

After a snooze we tucked into a spicy Thai green curry each, chicken for Mal, tofu for me. We didn’t have to worry about finding a clean looking restaurant, or bargain for a decent price- everywhere looked fabulous and the menus are clearly displayed in English and all competitively priced. We’d been in the country for almost 12 hours now and hadn’t been screwed over once. We really had left India behind.

Even though we had been to Thailand three years before, we still walked around with our jaws wide open, but we were comparing everything to India. This is still a developing country, the prices are similar to India, slightly higher, but the standard is a thousand times better. It’s not a struggle, everything is so easy. Yes, now we remember why we loved it so much the first time coming from Korea.

Khao San is mental at night time, there are tourists everywhere, stalls crammed on the road side outside the many restaurants and bars, loud music pumping, everyone laughing- such a holiday vibe, we were thrilled. A visit to the Seven Eleven store had me almost welling up, perhaps it was tiredness but it all seemed so familiar. The Seven Eleven’s were just the same as in Korea, in fact the whole street looked like a busy night out in Hong Dae (a lively university party area in Seoul) that I had a sudden feeling of homesickness. Not home sick for Korea, but the familiarity I guess. We could relax in the madness, it was something we were used to … now if only all our family and friends were around the next corner!

We truly got sucked into Bangkok.

You know in the Korean language ‘bang ko’ means basically to stay in your room/apartment and do nothing. If at school, my co workers asked me what I did for the weekend and I hadn’t been anywhere, just stayed at home pottering about- bang ko would cover this they explained, like the word Bangkok. Well that’s kind of what we did in Bangkok. We chilled out and took life very easily. For the first few days Mal was feeling wrecked from the bites and not recovering so we went to the doctors and discovered that bed bugs in India carry bacteria and Mal must have built up quite a lot because his lymph nodes were swollen. A course of antibiotics, antihistamines and some Berocca should sort him out.

We felt compelled to have massages most days at the ridiculously low price of $5 an hour- it would be an injustice to do otherwise. Stall food was a must and the fruit juices flowed freely- we didn’t even question the added ice! We passed a whopping nine days there, mixing in a few trips to Siam square, the huge shopping area. More malls have opened since our previous visit- beautiful, expensive air-conditioned malls that allow you to move from one mega mall to the next without stepping outside or touching the ground!

The Wondergirls (a massively popular Korean girl group) were live in one mall- although we missed their performance, shame since we had the shoulder shimmy dance down for their ‘Tell Me’ song. We revisited some of the temples and just thour

oughly enjoyed Bangkok- visit everyone; you'll love it!