THAILAND
BANGKOK-January 29-February 10, 2014
January 29, 2014
We arrive at the airport in Phnom Penh for our CAMBODIA ANGKOR AIR flight to BANGKOK. Details of this day leaving Cambodia are in my blog post for Cambodia, January 29, 2014. Flight is short and soon we are in Thailand!! Our flight is on time and we easily claim our checked baggage and get through passport control/customs/immigration with no problems. Next order of business is to change some money. I use one of the many ATMs located in the airport area to withdraw 10000 baht from my debit account. Unfortunately I took no pictures of this arrival to the airport! Must have been having a senior moment. I find a 7-11 store in the airport and make my first Thai purchase-a bottle of water for 10 baht.
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| Our plane from Phnom Penh to Bangkok |
Then, remembering my research, we head to the public taxi desk. We show our hotel voucher/info for our destination. It's very straight forward. You give the destination, they tell you the approximate price, and give you a slip of white paper which says (For passenger) on top. It has instructions written in Thai and English. The dispatcher gives another part of the form to the driver. The driver takes you to your destination. Because of all our luggage we are going in a van instead of a car. This will cost more. The meter fare was 660 baht. I rounded it up to 700 baht.
Lots of traffic everywhere but we arrive at the
BOSSOTEL in one piece. I will learn during our many trips in taxis that they all drive like maniacs! We complete the check in process and pay our hotel bill for the remaining 2 nights. I had paid a deposit of 1 night on May 27, 2013 when I made our reservation for this hotel through booking.com. My rate through booking.com was 1900 baht per night. The room rate is cheaper if you reserve directly with the hotel which I did for our subsequent stays. The hotel rate for a superior double/twin room is 1800 baht per night when booked direct. The rate includes breakfast and all taxes. We are given a
welcome drink which seems to be the norm for most of our hotels. The hotel has a great location with a few minutes walk to Saphan Taskin BTS and the Sathorn/Central Pier. Also walking distance to Silom area. There is a long, narrow pool with views of the city, a small exercise room, a tour desk, and an in house restaurant. We are escorted to our room, #518. The room is nice with beds that will prove to be comfortable. I will have to request a softer pillow however as it was too firm for me. There is a small couch for seating, a TV, and equipment/supplies to make coffee/tea in the room. Plenty of storage space. The bathroom has a separate shower and tub. No view of the river but at this rate I'm more than happy with our room.
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| Hotel lobby |
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Pool
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| View from the pool area |
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| Exercise room right by the pool |
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| Bathroom opens to sleeping are but can be closed off. Nice deep bathtub. |
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Separate shower area
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| Nice comfortable beds |
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| Small couch for sitting and TV that we never turned on |
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| Mini fridge and coffee/tea making supplies |
We head to the tour desk located in the hotel as we need to get train tickets for
Chiang Mai. (I tried to book our train tickets on line while we were in Cambodia but was unable to do so due to the "Shut down Bangkok" demonstrations as it seems like the ticket office had been closed down). I had planned to take the overnight tourist train on February 1, 2014. All the seats on the overnight tourist recommended trains are booked. Nothing left. Chinese New Year!! We have no choice but to take seats on train 51 which leaves at 10:00 pm and arrives in Chiang Mai at 1:05 pm the next day. It's going to be a LONG night. We are told that the seats don't recline and there is no A/C. The tourist recommended train that I wanted would have had us in a sleeping berth with A/C and while it leaves a few hrs. earlier it gets in to Chiang Mai in the morning. Those trains are #13 or #1. Our seat on this train cost 431 baht each. We are in car 9, seats 15 and 16. Cost of getting the 2 train tickets from the tour desk was 1200 baht total for her fee plus the cost of the tickets.
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Now that our train ticket situation is settled we decide to have
dinner at our
hotel as we are too tired to go elsewhere and I'm still recovering from my stomach illness that started in Phnom Penh. I order a nice cup of hot tea, my husband who has an iron clad stomach rejoices with a Singha beer. French fries and vegetable noodle shrimp soup round out our meal. Cost which includes 10% service charge was 297 baht. I should also mention that today was our 46th wedding anniversary. I had plans for a great dinner with after drinks at one of the sky bars. Oh well, there's always my birthday on March 31st when we will be back in Bangkok!
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| So so fries |
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Great soup
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I decide to scrap my planned itinerary for tomorrow. Instead we will take things easy. Originally I had scheduled our day to include the National Museum, City Pillar, Wat Mahathat, and Loy Nava for dinner but I want to enjoy the dinner so I change up things to the Erawan Museum only.
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