24 February 2009
So I’ve been given a free trip to Bangkok by my new friends at Flight Centre who I know work for and Thai Airways. I left work at about 2:30pm and headed for the airport. I got there and checked into my flight and had a whole row to myself for the 9 hour flight.
We landed in Bangkok around 11pm and reach our hotel by about 12am. We stayed at a really nice four-star place, much, much nicer than the accommodation I’m used to on my travels. My room had a spa and its own bar and the biggest bed I have ever seen in my life. I freshened up a bit and went off the explore the local area with two of the other guys I was travelling with Michael and Elliot. We decided to go bar hopping and I was immediately shocked and delighted by how cheap alcohol was. We ended up at this bar which was called “Larry’s Beach Getaway”, that had sand all over the floor. After lock out time we were invited to the upstairs bar, where the cops couldn’t see and played pool for a bit.
We ended up leaving there slightly trashed and headed out onto the streets. I tried the local Thai McDonalds specialty, Samurai McPork burger. Much nicer than it sounds actually. (At least when your drunk) We ended up drinking at a street bar…literally alcohol being sold on a table in the gutter. We stayed out until about 4am and then had to get up for an 8am start…oh joy!
We had a great day the next day. We set out on the Cho Praya river and saw all the little houses on stilts and people rowing around doing their business. Then we went to the Royal Barge Museum, a place that isn’t even open to the public. We got to see all the beautiful gold barges which are paraded down the street at festival time.
Our last stop before lunch was Wat Arun, or the temple of the Dawn. The temple is a towerlike structure which sits next to the river. When you get up close you can see that it is not decorated with tiles, but in face pieces of smashed china. Fascinating. I managed to climb up the steep steps and had a great photo taken at the top.
We actually made our own lunch with a cooking class at the Blue Elephant Cooking school. I can’t remember what I cooked but it did taste really good. Always a plus.
This was only a short familiarisation trip, so we left that night. On arrival at their airport, we found out that we had been upgraded to business class! This meant we could use the lounge and oh my god they had free massages for business class passengers. Now I get why people pay all this money. Elliot spent so much time in the lounge that we held up the plane, this is now the new Bangkok airport and we didn’t realise how far away we were from our departure gate. Business class on Thai airways was just pure luxury and it allowed me to relax all the way home.