Sun
31st December, 2006
Our flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok was an interesting one,
for different reasons. Firstly, there seemed to be so many
children on board, even the stewardess said at one point,
exasperated, "So many babies!", and so the take off
and early part of the flight was dominated by crying
babies. Nice. The other interesting thing was that
we celebrated the new year in mid air, not once, but
twice. We took off at 10:20 Hong Kong time, and at
the stroke of midnight the pilot came over the PA and wished us
all a happy new year. Cheers everybody! We still had
a glass of wine at this stage, so had something to celebrate
with. It was soon after this that we changed time zones
and went back an hour, back to last year! How weird is
that! So at the stroke of midnight, Thailand time, we
celebrated the new year again. That's a first for us, but
one of the few benefits we could see from flying on new years
eve. On the ground, the airport was fairly quiet. I had
a surprise at the immigration control, I thought the female
officer looked quite stern and she didn't say a word as she
processed my passport, but as she handed it back to me she gave
a beaming smile and handed me a red rose as well, wishing me a
happy new year. How fantastic. Unfortunately, Rita
didn't get one, but I explained it was reserved for the really
nice passengers. That went down well, I can assure you. Luggage
took half an hour to arrive, I must get rid of those few banned
items then I wouldn't need to check my bag in, or so Rita keeps
telling me. Its only sharp items that are causing the
problem, liquids are only banned on flights to Europe and North
America, strange really. Booked a taxi through the
official taxi desk, can save a lot of hassle from dodgy taxi
drivers wanting to take you for a ride, literally. It
seemed a lot further to our pre-booked hotel, the Asha Guest
House, than I remembered the description on the website saying,
but after 40 minutes we rolled up outside the right place,
around 1:45am I double checked the phone number on the
sign outside to make sure, you never know as there are often
more than one place in a city with the same name.
The proprietor was very friendly, obviously from England, and
gave us some advice about going to Myanmar. He also asked
if we'd heard the news about the bombs. What
bombs? There had been five bombs set off in Bangkok
earlier in the evening, two people had been killed and a dozen
or more were injured, and they had cancelled all the New Year
countdowns and street celebrations because of it. We
retired to our fan-cooled bed a little subdued. The room
was ok, lighting very dim, but a good size room with a small
balcony, not bad for 5quid a night. Back
to Itinerary
Mon 1st January, 2007
In case I haven't said it already to you, Happy New Year! Checked
the Foreign office travel advice for Thailand this morning, it
basically says dont go anywhere in Bangkok at the moment unless
absolutely necessary. It's a strange thing, but sitting in
our hotel you wouldn't know there was anything out of the
ordinary, but perhaps we should keep a bit of a low profile for
a day or two, see what develops. The authorities dont seem
to know anything about the reasons behind the bombs, maybe its
because of unrest about the military take over of the
government, apparently a lot of people are unhappy with
it, and getting unhappier still it seems. Time will tell. After
sitting around for a while we decided to go for a little walk
around the neighbourhood, just to stretch our legs and check out
whats around here. We haven't been to this area before,
and I had to ask the guy on reception to show me where exactly
we were. The joys of not having a guide book!
Found a big supermarket, Big C, unlike anything we've seen for months,
nice change to walk around, even though we only bought a few
simple bits and pieces. Very warm for us outside, after
the freezing weather in Korea, then only a couple of days to get
used to boost in temperatures in Hong Kong, we've now gone up to
the low 30's (Celsius, of course), so it's a bit of a shock to
the system. I suppose we'll get used to it, although we're not
planning on being anywhere cold until we get back home in March
so we've got plenty of time to practice being hot! Tuesday
2nd January, 2007. Busy day, lounging
around by the small pool next to the bar/restaurant. Oh
what I'd give to have to go to work and be in a cold
climate. Not a lot, actually! Sorry to rub it
in. Or am I? In the evening we met up with a Thai
friend, Ying, with whom we'd been on a skiing trip with in South
Korea, she took us to a big massage place, where we had a
Thai foot massage. What a coincidence, us being in
Thailand and getting a Thai massage! Spooky, eh?
Never having had a professional massage of any sort before, it
was very interesting, starting with bathing the feet, then
massaging the feet and lower legs with oil. I wasn't over
impressed when she pulled my toes one at a time to make them
click, the first was a surprise but then I knew what was coming
for the rest of them, a little unnerving but I sort of got used
to it by the last one. The massage ended with a brief
massage of the arms and shoulders, including clicking all my
fingers (I do wish she'd stop doing that) and the whole thing
was over in an hour. The time had flown by, and we came
away with a sort of tingling, yet relaxed, feeling in our feet Wed
3rd January, 2007 Met us with Ying for lunch, she new of a
great noodle place, quite modern but the food was wonderful.
Ying also showed us where she believed the best deals on cameras
could be got, a shop not far from the Sala Daeng Skytrain
station. I'd more or less decided not to take my digital SLR
camera to Myanmar, partly to cut right down on luggage, but also
the authorities there can be suspicious of people with big
cameras, they might be journalist or photographers, and might
confiscate the camera until you leave the country. So, I
was in the market for a small digital, and settled on the
Panasonic FX50, mainly because it has a good wide angle
capability, equivalent to 28mm on an SLR, and it also has a
Leica lens, which is supposed to be quite good.
Back
to Itinerary
Thu 4th January, 2007
Scheduled to fly on 7:15am flight, (that's
mighty early) to Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon.
Up at 4:30 am, quickly showered and dressed,
finished off our packing and downstairs waiting for a taxi at
5am to take us to the airport. The night watchman goes out
to the road and flags down a taxi as it passes, can be a bit hit
and miss, but there always seems to be a taxi passing every few
minutes, no matter what time of day.
300 Bahts and 45 minutes later we were in the
departure hall. The queue for flight FD3770 was long and
moving slowly, perhaps we should have got here earlier?
Then we noticed a really short queue for passenger with no
luggage to check in. That's us! Five minutes later
we had checked in and were progressing swiftly through security
and immigration. Had the usual problem at the latter,
picked the shortest line and took the longest to get through,
thanks to the westerner who had something wrong with his
passport, probably overstayed his welcome, they seem to be a
little hotter on that in Thailand at the moment.
After a sly traditional pre-flight beer which we
had bought with us, (its too expensive to buy at the airport!)
we were soon called up to the gate. The seats on Air
Asia flights are not allocated, so its a free for all, meaning
that everybody is pushing to get a good seat. Why? Its
only an hours flight, and the nearer you sit to the front of the
plane, the sooner you're going to die when, sorry, if it
crashes. That's what I tell other passengers, any
way. I'm not nice sometimes.
Managed to get seats half way back in the plane,
despite being in the second bus load carted out to the plane
parked (do they park planes?) at the other end of the airport.
Well, if you cant beat them, join them. The flight was
fairly full, thanks to Air Asia offering the cheapest flights to
Yangon. Got some nice pictures of the misty hills, aside
from the usual haze problem. New camera seems to be
working just fine. Still not sure if I've done the right
thing by leaving my long zoom SLR in the lockup in
Bangkok. Time will tell.
Continued on our Myanmar
page
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Fri 19th January, 2007
Arrived back in Bangkok after a couple of weeks
in Myanmar. After a joyful reunion with my laptop, we
settled down to chill out for a few days, before we fly off to
India. We stayed at the Asha Guest House again, partly
because that's where we had left some luggage before we went to
Myanmar, but also because its quite a pleasant place to hole-up
for a while, and the wifi broadband access was working this
time. It was mighty hot and humid when we first got back,
being that little bit further south than Yangon, and the heat
almost got too much for us,
We had a couple of shopping expeditions into
town, buying some Thai silk goodies and a few other bits and
pieces, including a large holdall to put all our rapidly
accumulating purchases in. So much for travelling light!
Actually, we'd decided that we'd take advantage of our luggage
allowance for the final few flights of this tour, and take back
some stuff for our new abode. Between us we have a luggage
allowance of 46kg, and we haven't been using any of it, having
taken all our luggage on as carry on. At least the holdall
has wheels to make it easy to cart around.
On
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