First Day in Bangkok

It's been a few days since I came back from my Bangkok trip and I feel nostalgic about my Bangkok trip. To sum it up, it was good fun and excitement spread over the 4 days with numerous characters and events never failing to entertain us. I began my research on Bangkok once the travel dates was confirmed. Scrolling through the web pages about Bangkok made me even more excited about going to Bangkok and the day finally came after 3 weeks of wait. The 3 survivors going to the trip were Megan, Sara and me.

Megan and I reached the airport earlier than expected at 11am as I guess we couldn't wait to check-in and get on the plane to Bangkok. We got a shock when we learnt our third and final survivor, Sara was in the airport as we expected him to come late as usual as I can't remember the last time he was punctual. I received a bigger shock when I saw that his bag was bulky and I asked him to weigh his bag and the bag weighed a grand total of 7 kilos after telling him to bring minimal stuff the day before as we would be doing shopping over there. The tag '7 kilo Saravanan' got stuck to him for the entire trip. After Meenatchi and Anbu send us off, we did wingdow-shopping before getting onto the plane.

It was a long time since i got onto a plane and I requested for the window seat. The view from the plane is simply breath-taking and you can never get sick of having an eagle-view of our tiny island unless you are flying week in week out. More trouble were to come as Megan got into an uncomfortable sitting position when an Indian expat sitting in front of him began to recline his seat all the way to the back and the other two survivors were having a laugh at his expense. The Cathay Pacific air stewardess were pretty average as I was not expecting SIA standards and our lunch was served half and hour before landing and I had to rush my lunch. A pity that I had to rush through my Haggen daz Ice cream..

More trouble were to follow as people warned me to shave off my beard before leaving for Bangkok as the custom checks are very rigorous nowadays. As usual, I wanted to test the system and it was not my beard but the arrival/departure card which got me into trouble as the staff over there refused to chop my passport until I have filled my form completely. I made a grand total of 3 trips to the lady before I went to the other counter as I was pissed. After clearing customs(which was a breeze), we went to search for our travel agent.

This travel agent deserves a mention in my blog. He was one of the highlights of our trip and the survivors named him 'Smiling Prince' as he was always smiling and he tried to encourage us to buying 600 baht tickets to the tiger show. I realised that it was too hefty and he was going to earn a big fat commission from us. As Danny put it, everybody in Bangkok is a professional and they will earn commission one way or another and I'm not going to let him earn commission off us. Our van came a hour late and Smiling Prince somehow managed a wry smile in the midst of his panic mode.

There were two other passengers on the van as well. Megan named them R and J(Romeo and Juilet) as they were hilarious on the last day. While we were all in the van, R and J were talking about going to a temple to get 4D numbers and Megan understood them as he could understand simple mandarin phrases and words. We were just surprised that people do such nonsensical things in this age but I guess greed knows no limits.

After an hour on the road, we reached our hotel and Smiling Prince tried to push his luck with massage thinking that he can earn some commission finally but we disappointed him yet again. When we went into our hotel room, I received a pleasant shock. There was a bathtub,a proper tv with decent channels, 2 sofas and 2 proper beds and a spare bed and a window finally. The Malaysian hotel which we stayed in last year was a disaster and the facilities were atrocious! We began to laze around in the hotel room before going to Mah Broon Kong(MBK).

MBK is one of the biggest shopping centres in Bangkok and you need at least a day to go through all the shops. We had a proper meal at a restarant and the finale dish was a currypuff pizza which was unique and good. We tucked in to some Dunkin Donuts(awesome) before going for a massage.

The Thai traditional massage is very good and I almost fell asleep as it was that good. It was certainly one of the highlights of our trip as it was relaxing and it was worth the money. I will definitely recommend the Thai massage to anyone going to Bangkok.

Day 2-To be continued...................