Trip to BKK

In 2005 I made first trip to Bangkok, after having been curious about this place for so long it finally came to my first visit. Everyone always mentions the pollution from traffic and the traffic jams, not being clean and so. Well I just wanted to see it all myself, and I must say I wasn't disappointed at all, I found it a very interesting city! A bit the Paris of Asia perhaps? Why?, well on the one hand it has old buildings and scenery and on the other hand it has nice new buildings and architecture. Old and new sort of go hand in hand, the new looks very new and the old very old, there's like no road in between.

But let's start with telling how I got there in the first place;) I made my trip during my stay in Singapore but about two months before I arrived there I booked the plane tickets already online while I was still back home in Holland. Taking AirAsia, first experience with taking a budget airline from Asia. It turned out the be a good choice, not only was the flight cheap but also quite comfortable. Comfortable leather seats, ok not that much legroom of course but still..  A smooth trouble free journey, quite pleased:) Once we arrived at then still Don Muang Airport we were had to take the airport bus from the plane to the terminal. Perhaps you experienced it too, of course everyone want to get on the first bus to be able to be the first ones out. So you get squeezed into a bus and you are left holding your breath for the time it takes to get transported to the terminal, all part of the fun I suppose;) Sometimes you make new friends in the most odd places it seems cause by the time we walked from the bus to terminal we ran into Singaporean couple and were already laughing about our shared experience. Talking and laughing all four of us now made our way to customs and baggage collection. They asked us how would we travel from the airport into town, by train I said. Another thing I found out on forehand that taking the train would be quite handy in comparison to other means like a taxi or bus, it would also be lots cheaper then a taxi;)

Ok we'll join you then they said, sure no problem just tag along..the more the merrier! Ok you know where to go then was the next question, how to walk? Are there any signs saying where's the station, our new friend ask while standing right under a sign saying train station that way. That caused more laughs of course, least it did with us:) Once we reached the platform we were into our first surprise though. How to get the tickets, everything was written in Thai! Luckily there was a lady waiting at the platform who was able to tell us we had the wait for the ticket booth to open up to be able to buy a ticket, seemed it only opened up shortly before the train would arrive. With the tickets in our pocket we saw the train arrive after awhile, next surprise! It only seem to have single class cars, ah well nevermind lets just take place at the first available seats since there were lots of people on the train. And so our train journey to down town Bangkok started.

The train ride was quite an experience in itself already! Quite an old train with no aircon or working fans on the ceiling, well as long as it's moving it's not too bad cause of the draft from all the open windows. But once it stops...all the smells came out as you can imagine perhaps;) The scenery along the way was also interesting I though. You get to see the not so glamorous side of a big city where people are living under bad circumstances. It makes you realise how fortunate you are then.

After about a 50min. train ride we reached the station and transferred to the Metro and later Skytrain to go to our hotel. Along the way we dropped off our newly made friends at their place of stay with the promise we would meet each other the next day for lunch. Once we reached the Skytrain station near our hotel we were in for the last surprise of the day. Well actually we first took the wrong exit at the Skytrain station and were wondering how to walk to the hotel, on the map it seemed much closer! Realising the mistake we walked back to the station and started again, taking the other exit...and yes now it was just a couple of minutes walk! So far so good, we checked in and from the outside the hotel looked fine we thought. Then we were brought up to our room. ..oops...that looked a lot less nicer then in the pictures on the website... The room was big but was badly due for a much needed upgrade!