Day 13 - One night in Bangkok

Bangkok, Thailand

I know, I know it’s kind of a cheesy title for this blog and, to be perfectly transparent, I’ve actually used this title before during my last visit to Bangkok.

This time, however, I truly am in Bangkok for one night only.

Today begins the tail end stretch of my Tibet/Nepal trip as I slowly make my way back home.

Because my flight didn’t leave until 3pm, I took my sweet time this morning.

I casually woke up at 9:00, got ready, packed up the rest of my stuff, and went across the street for a late breakfast.

At noon I checked out and was on my way to the airport.

Airport Chaos

Now, I’ve gone to plenty of airports in all parts of the world during my travels and I can honestly say that the Kathmandu Airport is easily the craziest one I’ve been to.

As my taxi pulled up there was a huge crowd up people outside.

I thought at first that they were people who had just arrived and were waiting for a taxi but, nope, they were actually waiting to get inside the airport.

As usual, I had checked in online and when I do, I just enter the airport and go straight to immigration, security, and then the gates.

This airport, not so much.

First I had to actually get in the airport.

There was a huge line to just enter as we all had to go through an xray machine right at the entrance.

Thankfully the line did move kind of briskly but, still, it took a good 15 minutes just to get inside.

I tried to go up the escalator to get to the immigration area but the man there said everyone needed a paper ticket.

So, basically online checkin is non-existent here.

Off to the checkin counter I went.

It’s actually been a long time since I’ve done this as I always check in online and only travel with carryon baggage now.

Not today, though.

Another line to stand in.

The man at the counter asked if I had any checked bags and I nodded no.

Then he asked me to put my big backpack on the weight scale.

Ah, shit.

I already knew where this was headed…

Sure enough, I was over their 7kg limit as my bag weighted 12.7kg and they made me check it in and pay an extra 45usd ($60) for the pleasure of doing so.

Immigration was actually pretty quick as they had a line for Nepalese people and one for foreigners and, while the Nepalese line was long, the foreigner line had no one in it.

Next was security where I, sadly, had to give up my travel scissors and, finally, after almost an hour, I was heading to the gates.

Chaos!

On the plus side I didn’t have to lug around my big backpack or worry about finding space in the overhead compartments on the plane.

Of course, on the negative side, I was out $60 and I’d have to wait at the dreaded carosuel waiting for my bag to arrive all the time hoping it didn’t get lost or damaged.

Kathmandu to Bangkok

My flight was at 3pm and was only 3 1/2 hours. With a time zone change, we’d be landing in Bangkok at 7:40.

I was in row 8 and, as they closed boarding, I noticed the first 7 rows only had a couple of people sitting in them.

I asked the flight attendant if I could move up a row and, tada, I had a whole row to myself.

My tablet was on and I started to watch some White Lotus and then, after awhile, I noticed we hadn’t moved yet.

We actually sat at our gate for more than an hour before we finally started to taxi to the runway.

Well, so much for arriving at a semi-reasonable time.

Hello Bangkok!

We finally touched down in Bangkok at just after 8:30pm.

Despite the late time of the evening, it was still 29c out and, boy oh boy, was it humid.

Yup, this is the southeast Asia I remember from my Asia trip 12 years ago.

I didn’t realize I needed a visa on arrival so I had to abruptly do one at one of the little terminals along the wall.

Frustrating to have to do that pitstop when all you wanna do is get through immigration and get the hell out of the airport.

Turns out it didn’t matter though because even with that I was in and out of immigration in about 10 minutes and, of course, our luggage carousel hadn’t even started moving yet.

By 9:15 I was hopping into a Bolt (Thailand’s version of Uber) and on my way to my hostel for the night.

Normally I take public transit whenever I travel but when I only have a few hours here and the car is air conditioned, it kind of changed my mind.

At 10:00 I was finally at my hostel and after unpacking a couple of things, I was out the door.

I only had two things I wanted to do with my very limited time here in Bangkok – a massage and some pad thai.

Massage places are everywhere so that wasn’t a problem.

Finding some pad thai though, well, that was a bit of a mission.

I just decided to walk up the street on my way back to the hostel and keep my eagle eyes open.

Also, I should note, it was now past midnight so the choices were limited.