Honey I'm home. Kind of.

In the morning I got up and was ready to see my girlfriend in Bangkok, where she lives.  I still had a lot of traveling to do before I got to see her.  First step was get on the subway.  I made the same mistake and ended up at the wrong subway station again.  This meant I had to ride the subway one station and then transfer and then ride the subway to Shin-Osaka Station.  It then was ride the shinkansen one last time back to Tokyo Station.  Once at Tokyo Station I had to find the platform for the express train back Narita.  The signs were very clear and I followed them but I felt like I was hiking through the Rockies while going against the flow of every Tokyo resident all at once.  I would go down some stairs cross a hall go up some stairs walk 500 meters and then up again through a large room and back down again.   I lost count how many times I went up and down but by the time I was at the correct platform I was tired.  I then realized I needed the bathroom which of course was back up the stairs.  Good thing I had lots of time.

From Tokyo Station to Narita was an easy 90 minutes.  Check in at the airport went quick as well as I all I needed to do was find my gate.  Of course this meant there was one more short monorail ride to the annex that my flight would leave from.  Again I was early so I had time to kill and lucky for me Yahoo has a free internet cafe inside Terminal 2 near the food court.  6 hours later I was landing in Bangkok and was in Thailand for the 3rd time this year.

Before I left home I borrowed a cell phone that is programed for Thailand from a friend who lives part of the year in northern Thailand each year.  Once I landed and got quickly through immigration I went and found the Happy store and bought some minutes for my phone.  I noticed they had made some changes at Suvarnabhumi International Airport.  On previous trips as soon as you got out of immigration you were all surrounded by taxi driver, tour operators and various other people hoping to make some money from you had taken 2 steps within in Thailand.  This time there was a lot of extra police and barricades to keep those folks at the other end of the terminal.  Kind of ironic that after they added all this extra security a few weeks later the airport would be taken over by protesters. 

My girlfriend insists on meeting me at the airport when I arrive.  I guess she does want me to be alone in Bangkok and so she meets me within minutes of arriving.  I was expecting to see her as soon as exit immigration but now had to find her.  Good thing I had the cell phone.  A quick phone call and we were back together.  Woot Woot!

Time to find a taxi.  I will write a tip on how to get a cheap taxi out of Suvarnabhumi without spending a long time haggling.  A 30 minute ride in the taxi brought us to our hotel where we holed up for a few days, the Nasa Vegas Hotel.  We spent the next few days relaxing and catching up with each other and some of her friends.