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Thai Road Trip

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Topic review
   

Expand view Topic review: Thai Road Trip

Thai Road Trip

Post by mozza21 » Thu Feb 26, 2015 6:51 pm

Send your comments on this post to postbox@mzawf.org :myopinion

My girlfriend Nikki and I had been saving for a whole year to afford this holiday, and the time was finally here, November was well underway in the UK, and despite being a much warmer autumn than we’re used to, it was still freezing. We had planned and planned, and now we were ready to tackle 2 flights, 5 cities, 7 hotels, 10 nights, and 2000 Kilometres driving through The Kingdom of Thailand.

First point to mention here is the flight out, which as I fly standby (perk of working for the Airline) is always a pretty stressful time. There we were at the Staff Travel desk in terminal 5 Heathrow, waiting to see if our names turn blue (which is good) or red (which is bad); I couldn’t help but make parallels to the Matrix. Luckily for us after an hour of waiting our names went blue, this meant there were enough seats on the plane to allow us on board, and we proceeded to the blue desk for blue names. At the desk we collected our tickets, and I mentioned to the agent at the desk that we only had 40 minutes remaining until the flight departed, “do we have time to make the gate?” I asked politely. “Take this pass and you’ll get priority through security” he said, “oh…. and you better run” he added. “RUNNNNNN!” I shouted in what seemed like slow motion, and that’s what we proceeded to do at lightning speed, through security, onto the monorail to the gate, and through duty free.
Just as we made the gate I started to wheeze and slowed up, “Quickly” I heard, which was being shouted at me by two airline staff at the gate, “Uh eeee, Uh eeeeee” I replied. Anyway we made it boarded the flight and we were off, whoosh.

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Upon landing I was amazed by all the plants and decoration in Bangkoks main airport, Suvarnabhumi (Sa-war-ne-poom), it seemed a very well maintained and exotic place, we jumped in a taxi and on we went to downtown Bangkok. We arrived at our first hotel, The Glow Trinity in the Silom district, a really nice building and overall a lovely hotel for our first night, we paid about £40.00 for a premier room and it was more than adequate for our needs. We decided to try and see a little bit of Bangkok, we were not to be here very long so we wanted to get as much in as we could.
We jumped in a Tuk Tuk with a mad driver and headed for the river to take a boat ride. I would definitely recommend doing this in your own private boat, a little more expensive but, we were able to stop and see sights along the way due to having the hire of the boat. The sights and sounds of the city were everywhere, from the hum of electricity from the low hanging wires, the sizzle of the street vendor’s wok, and the markets all around the city, it was unlike anywhere else I’ve experienced and I would definitely recommend Bangkok to anyone. We spent that evening at a bar called Cloud 47, it was on the 47 floor of an office tower in Silom, there are many roof top bars in Bangkok, and if you go, make sure you see one. The view from our table was spectacular, the lights of the city glowing in every direction as far as the eye could see, it was hard not to feel romanticised by the whole situation, and a little bit like in a dream, of course consuming 3 litres of Ashahi beer could’ve had something to do with that as well. The following day we picked up our car hire to start our journey south.

Whilst driving to the south one of the key things that I picked up was; the rules when driving, if you move into someone’s lane, they move out of your way, likewise if they move into yours, you better move out of their way because they’re coming regardless. We had a saying on this holiday, “drive it like a local would”. We managed to go all over the South, we saw Phetchaburi which is a really old town full of thieving monkeys, literally, thieving monkeys, and temples, if you’re after culture then this is your place. Hua Hin, this is a really cosmopolitan town where the king of Thailand likes to holiday, there are lots of ex pats here and to me, it seemed like a mini Phuket, white beaches, lots of hustle bustle. Moving further south we stayed in Chomphong, this is a transit town and is used by tourist coaches as a stopover on the way south, it is full of mopeds and nightlife, the street food in Chomphong was some of the best we ate, a hotel for the night is around £11. I imagine that Chomphong is how most of Thailand looked before tourists staked their claim on the major cities.

We then made our way on to Krabbi in the south, and whilst very nice, I wasn’t too impressed, although the scenery of Krabbi is stunning, limestone casks that seem to come up out of nowhere which make it simply beautiful. Raleigh beach is in this area and this is one of the most stunning beaches in Thailand that we saw, the only way to access it is by boat but there are lots of boat taxis you can get for £2 a head from the Krabbi mainland. Having said this however, it is the tourism in the area that I didn’t enjoy, the stench by night of sewage drains that just couldn’t cope for example. We did manage to negotiate a hotel in the area called the Krabbi Resort, and as there was some building work going on there, we got a suite at 30% of the sale price. I would definitely recommend trying to negotiate hotels if you have time rather than booking in advance, especially if you will be staying a few nights.

We had a lot of fun on this holiday and if you have never been to Thailand, then I recommend that you go, the people are so friendly and willing to help, the food is amazing whether it be street food or a restaurant, my only gripe is the price of wine which is about £12 a bottle but I don’t think the Thais are known for their work with grapes.

If you’re going to drive, then make sure you have a sat nav as you will need it for the trickier areas but, there is absolutely nothing to worry about when it comes to driving, the only thing I would say is avoid driving around Bangkok itself, the roads are seven lanes in places and I didn’t like it when the Honda Brio was sandwiched between 4 lorries on all sides, very scary indeed.

To tell you about the whole trip would require a book to be written, so one day I may decide to try and get myself published but, not yet.

In summary however, I can see why so many tourists visit this stunning and beautiful country, if you have never been, ?
Then go. !


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