Today was another fine, beautiful day. We woke up around 8:00 to catch the autobus to the airport; however the lady informed us that the 10:00 (which we needed for our 1:15 flight) was all full. Surely due to some hidden signal, the taxi drivers immediately swooped in: "airport? me give you ride. good fare. fast. where you go? airport?" While Taxis are inexpensive, we are both pretty cheap. We decided to take the boat taxi (13baht, 30cents) down the Chao Praya River to the Central terminal. A quick ride on the Skytrain, a transfer at Siam station, and we soon arrived at Hua Lamphong (railway station). The station has a great information staff. An interesting revelation I had is the need to lower my defenses to trust what somebody says. But, both Yan-Shih and I agreed, the information people were, informative. The lady informed us that the train didn't run durning mid-day, and the only other train we could take was an express train, and that was about 200baht per person. As I stated before, we are pretty cheap, so we at some food, and walked out to the buses. Bus 29 was just around the corner, and we jumped on.
The image many would have in their head when I say "bus" is of a modern "the wheels on he bus go round and round" bus. But, while the wheels on the bus go round and round, that is about it. We took the 8baht fan bus (and I was the only white person on it). The floors were made of wood, and all the windows rolled down. Needless to say, it was quite a ride. We somehow made it out to the bus stations, and jumped off the bus.
An amusing tid-bit to complete the story: after we get off the bus, a taxi was near the off ramp. The taxi driver yelled "me take you to airport." Hey, bro, we just got off a freaking city bus, why would we take the taxi across the expressway? Rhetorical question.
Check-in and boarding went fine, as has been my experience on this side of the world. We had our bags sniffed by a drug-puppy-dog, but that wasn't an issue, of course. My wisdom teeth will be coming out shortly, but I didn't even bring the prescribed pain medication into Thailand.
On our flight we helped a guy, Jose (I think), from Spain. He met a Taiwanese girl while studying in England, and this was only his second time coming to Taiwan. After customs we met his girlfriend's parents, and they confidently live in the same neighborhood as I do. We may meet up for dinner sometime in the end of August.
And lastly, we helped a guy from Japan on the bus find his Hotel. Well, Yan-Shih did, cause I sure don't speak an ounce of Japanese.
This entry is from my journal and was written on Aug. 13, 2006. It's been tagged with travel. There have been 0 comments so far.
@depping Tweeting while flying, that's almost ironic. (about 11 hours ago)