Bangkok - Day 1

Day 1 - 21st March (Friday)

Bangkok had been on my To-Do list for a very long time. The last time I planned a holiday there, a coup messed up my plans. So when my friends Shub and Pizzadude suggested going to Bangkok during the Good Friday weekend, I jumped. Viv jumped too. He had not had a break from work for a verrry long time now.

After we'd bought the air tickets and made the hotel booking, Viv found out that the Singapore cricket team was going to Bangalore for a tournament on the following Monday after this weekend. So he had to do some last minute changes in the plan so he could fly to Bangalore directly from Bangkok. He was going to take Thai Airways, while the three of us were taking AirAsia. Fortunately, our takeoff timings were 10 minutes apart, and so all of us went to the airport together and hung out.

The four of us in the passengers' lounge

Suddenly we had this crazy idea to do a synchro blog post. And so, the three of us logged on to the terminals at the terminal, and this and this and this resulted. We synchronised the posts down to the number of exclamation marks! Viv, the only blogless fella, was extremely amused.

Finally, Viv went to board his flight, while Shub, Pizzadude and I headed for ours.

Shub taking pictures through the plane window

Since it was a budget flight, there was no food. We bought AirAsia's lemongrass drink and decided to play pictionary with Hindi movie names. Our grand plans of Viv's plane flying next to ours, and all of us playing dumb charades through the windows didn't quite work out.

How many movie names can you spot here?

As we landed in Bangkok, we saw the Thai airways plane. Was it Viv's plane?

A giant yaksha (half elephant half demon) at the airport. We were to see a lot of this dude in the days to come.

Viv met us at the visa counter, and we quickly got our visas. Suddenly, this Indian guy at another counter held up this passport and started yelling, "Who is Viv?" Viv dashed across to check whether it was his, and got scolded like anything. "How can you be so careless with your passport, blah blah?" Turns out, the passport belonged to some other Viv. Faaltu ka our Viv got scolded by the 'good samaritan'. :/


The taxi queue outside the airport

Off in the taxi towards our hotel!

At first we read this at 'Private hospital' but turns out it was 'Piyavate hospital'.

Curiously, our taxi driver's name was Mr. Piyavate too!

Orlando on a billboard

I got this nice shot from the taxi.

Busy street around our hotel - Bossotel

Bossotel turned out to be quite nice and cosy. The guys dropped us off in our room and headed for theirs.

The girls' room

We were pleasantly surprised to see a gym and a pool right next to our room!

After freshening up, Shub and I headed off to check out the guys' room and also brag about our gym and pool.

Holy cow the guys' room looked bigger, better and more comfy than ours! :/

The guys were waving to us from the balcony, showing off their room. They had no idea what was coming next. We drove them out of their room and took complete control. Muahahaha! The poor chaps had no choice but to agree to the swap.

Nicely folded bathroom rug

Taking stock of my cash, all of which was gonna go towards the Thai economy in the next two days!


Tiny colourful models near the staircase

We were starving and headed straight for dinner. We did not have time to venture too far out, so we decided to explore the areas around our hotel. We found a foodcourt in the nearby Robinsons Mall.

JMF Rice station, where we bought dinner

The poor stall owner had to make the rice three times, because the first two times she forgot it was supposed to be vegetarian. Being the only non-vegetarian, I was outnumbered. I ordered shrimp pineapple rice.

The stall owner preparing our dinner

Shub drifted off to buy green mango salad. The lady there too had to make it twice because she made it non-vegetarian the first time!

We ate an unbelievable amount of food and not just because we were starving. They say the best Indian food is in London, but the best Thai food is indeed, in Thailand. The flavours were simply yummilicious! Being the foodies that they are, Shub and Pizzadude were especially enamoured by the food.

The dinner spread - before

The dinner spread - after

After dinner, we took a walk around the place. The street markets were in full swing. Shub and I earmarked some shops to come back to later to buy clothes and jewellery.

Tuk-tuks, similar to the autorickshaws in India, dashed past us. Many paused to ask us where we wanted to go. Well, we just wanted to walk that's all.

Thai text on the back of the tuk-tuk

Dried giant squid

We also checked out the sky train map as it was going to be our main mode of transport.

Bangkok streets at night

I took this shot of the Chao Phraya river and the buildings around it.

Finally, fatigue took over and we decided it was time to head back.

On the way back, we saw this jewellery shop whose name had us in splits.

Coming up in the power-packed Day 2 - the confusion over the rooms, the Grand palace, climbing Wat Arun and the river cruise!