Greetings from Bangkok!
The Vietnam leg of our trip is now over. I cried at the airport. It was so difficult to leave beautiful Phu Quoc Island, and the manner in which we left in made it even harder. Basically, our original flight from the island to Saigon left us with one hour and fifty minutes to get onto our international flight to Bangkok. Then, on our last night on the island, our flight was brought forward by an hour- leaving us only fifty minutes to get off the plane, get our luggage, get to the International terminal, check in our baggage and go through customs etc. Cue a very panicked morning! Craig was up since 3am stressing about if we were going to make it, we were both too stressed to enjoy our breakfast or last morning on the island. And to make matters worse, we were sitting at the airport for an hour just staring at our plane thinking, how silly that we can't just leave now!
On disembarking from the plane, we literally ran to the baggage carrel, then had to wait for 15 minutes for it to come, then ran to International where the check in lady told us we should probably run to customs straight away. We made it just as the gates were opening for our flight! Thank god- how stressful!
Our flight to Bangkok was uneventful. On arriving to Bangkok airport however, stress was high again. That airport is just ridiculous. Imagine having to walk over 1km just to get to passport check and baggage. Then we had filled the forms in wrong for immigration and ended up lining up for over an hour altogether whilst our baggage went round and round waiting for us.
We then hailed a meter taxi and got to our hotel in about half an hour. The cab driver clearly thought, look at these two Westerners straight off the plane, I am going to rip them off- as the meter clearly said 250 Baht but he told us 550! Little did he know we are seasoned travellers, and after 3 weeks in Vietnam, know every scam and trick in the book! We got it for the right price.
Our hotel is very nice, but after such a stressful and fitful day, Craig was feeling very unwell so he slept and attempted to recover whilst I had a date with cable tv. We attempted to explore before dinner but it quickly became clear that our hotel was close to not much at all, despite having a beautiful view of the city and the river, so we headed back to the hotel feeling very defeated and missing Vietnam very much!
We had a nice dinner at our hotel however, I was excited to eat Pad Thai in Thailand. Craig then hit the sack early as he was still unwell and I made friends with the tv again. After a good nights sleep we both felt much better and more alive, but had an awkward day ahead of us as our train doesn't leave till 6 but we had to check out at 2pm. So we asked the hotel where we could venture to just for a few hours and one of the guys suggested a place called Siam, a small train ride away.
Ah, Siam! How amazing it was. The moment I fell in love with Bangkok. It was like a shopping mall on drugs. Level upon level of the coolest, craziest shops ever, decorated with crazy Christmas gear like huge rabbits dressed in Christmas get up. Plus, Madame Taussauds was there so we spent an hour hanging out with Obama, and the Queen, and Beyonce etc, although I was a little disappointed that the Twilight cast hadn't made it there yet! Haha.
We spent some blissful hours wandering around this magical place, somehow managing to spend not much money at all apart from some crazy Thai yummies to eat on the train this evening, and made it back here to the hotel just in time to check out.
Now, we are just about to get a cab to the train station where we will head up to Chiang Mai on a sleeper train where we will spend five nights! Oh, the thought of spending 5 nights still in one place sounds amazing to me, whether this place is as cool as Vietnam or not!
I will keep you all updated. Am missing you all lots, and am ALMOST ready to come home!
Hope all is well =) x
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