After the layover in Dubai, which lasted about three hours in the early morning of 10th Feb, I boarded an identical 777 for the second leg of my trip to Bangkok. Despite getting the exit row seat I had been promised, it was much more tiring than the first leg, partly because my body was telling me to sleep, but couldn’t actually pull it off, and partly because I was seated in between two particularly uncommunicative travellers. Finally I reached Bangkok at about midday, local time. I remembered something I had been told about being sure to use a metered taxi, and set off towards the rank. I didn’t quite make it though, because a rather forthright woman stepped in front of me and said something like “You want taxi – where go?”. I would have stepped around her except that she was wearing a Thai airways uniform, which caught my attention almost as much as the offical looking information kiosk she appeared to be running. I showed her the business card for my hotel.
“Viengtai. 650 baht”. She started filling out a voucher, while my tired mind did some startlingly fast mental arithmatic and arrived at £10. Seemed pretty expensive, but then there was the driver, ready to take my backpack off my hands, so I gave in.
As the taxi left the airport, it entered a wide highway under a big concrete flyover. All the way into town enormous billboards advertised companies known around the world – Panasonic, Canon, Yakult, Philips, McDonalds, and so on. The only thing that had made it stand out so far was the nature of the traffic, ie. aggressive and fast, with LOADS of motorbikes. It seemed to me that the Thai dating ritual must include taking your girlfriend for a ride on your motorbike, because there were a lot of young couples zipping around.
The hotel turned out to be quite a long way, but I still resolved to find a cheaper way of getting there the next time I arrive at Bangkok airport in two and a bit weeks time.
Checking into the Viengtai Hotel proved to be the first major problem – there was no record of my booking. The manager came along and decided to give me a room anyway while they checked it out with Gecko. Jolly nice of him – I must have done a very good ‘sincere’ face. The hotel included a mini shopping complex as well with all sorts of convienient services like tour bookings, travel agent, money changer, cafe, internet and even a massage place (for those who have never been to Thailand, there are a lot of places where you can get Thai massage – without the extra services for which they are notorious internationally). There was a swimming pool too.
I went back to the room and gave in to the temptation to sleep. I awake to the phone ringing – Gecko had sorted out my booking. Went back to sleep. Phone rang again, but this time I couldn’t make out the words so I said I’d go downstairs to reception. Reception said they hadn’t called. Confused, I went for a swim in the pool.
Later, I discovered that the call had been from Wee, the girl who I had met on the net and agreed to meet. I’d probably walked right past her. Must remember to call her tommorrow morning.