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Mr Robin’s Trip to Thailand – First leg Home to KL airport.
1020 ish….I have decided that I really don’t like airline terrorists. I guess that there are not really many people who do. Clearly blowing up aeroplanes is not big or clever. However it is the little inconveniences that their potential presence causes that leads to irritations. Sitting here in a café at Kuala Lumpur’s Low Cost Carrier Terminal drinking a high cost cup of coffee my baggage is slightly lighter than it was when left home this morning. My can of shaving foam and tube of toothpaste has been unceremoniously chucked in a wheelie bin by zealous security people. There was about enough left for half a dozen shaves and a good few squeezes of colgate remained too. However size mattered, not volume. The fact that I was carrying less then 100ml of both was neither here nor there. The 250ml container of Sainsbury’s finest foam was considered too much of a rue infringement to be permitted as was the 150ml tube of blue toothpaste. So my first port of call in Bangkok on arrival will now have to be to source the necessary chemicals to prevent facial hairiness and bad breath in containers under 100ml.
1530 (Thai time)Ekamai (Southern Bus Station in Bangkok) Well I politely declined the offer of the hosting school to collect me from the airport and whiz me off to Rayong for the training / meeting and festivities and so far I don’t regret it. Stepping out of Don Muang Airport into the Bangkok heat was a bit of shock. It was certainly hotter than KL this morning although stepping into Don Muang was also an experience. Lexi and I had last been through Don Muang eleven year ago when it was a busy international transport hub. With the opening of the new airport in Bangkok Don Muang was mothballed but kept ticking over as a military airport. Thanks to emergence of low-cost carriers such as Air Asia it has now been brought back in to use but really does feel a bit ghostly compared to before.
Getting through immigrations took yonks. There was nothing particularly difficult about getting through it simply took the various officials a long time to stamp my passport having read and re-read my passport and forms. While I was waiting in the queue, in a nearby mass, lots people all seemed to be milling around and then occasionally charging around following a uniformed official who called out various random names often with the result of much laughter. While the pushing a shoving and dashing was good-humoured it did appear to be quite a strange way to handle the systematic entrance into a country.
On clearing customs and entering the main terminal I couldn’t help but notice the Fish Inspection Office. Naturally had visions of uniformed officers looking in to tanks and plastic bags saying to passengers, “Yes, Madam/Sir, that is a fish,” and then life moving on. However fish inspecting is obviously a dying occupation. The office was deserted. Picture the scene. Two passengers arrive from overseas to Don Muang and the suspect that the package in their luggage that is wriggling is a fish, but are not sure. Where do they go to confirm their suspicions now?
Much later, nearly midnight, and at Purimas Hotel, Ban Chang, not near to Rayong. I say not that near to Rayong because it isn’t. As I prefer to travel following the ever hopeful, slightly happy go lucky method there are bound to be a few hitches. Arriving in Rayong and finding that I was thirty kilometres off course was a bit of a hitch. Also arriving to find that there were no taxis around was also a bit of hitch. I tried to confuse matters more by asking a lady in the bus station where the taxis were using my Aesan / Lao language and I succeeded. Buoyed by this lack of success I tried to speak to a possible taxi driver looking chap who at least understood a bit more of what I was saying and he pointed me in the direction of two motorbike taxi drivers and their mate. They confirmed to me that the place I was trying to head to was 30km away, in fact not that near Rayong at all and then a great thing happened. A chap came along and said “can I help you?” Between him and a phone call to the organizer of this great event we all managed to piece together that I was miles away from my target hotel and that a motorbike taxi was out of the question. That’s where the previously mentioned mate came into his own. He suddenly appeared to have access to a car and for 500 baht, about 10GBP, was able to deliver me to my destination. Admittedly the drive through an industrial estate and petro-chemicals site did concern me a little but he was good to his word and we found it. Pump action handshakes all round and I was there.
And here’s one more thought….The minibus driver from Bangkok to Rayong drove at amazing speed and extremely close to the rear of any vehicle that got in his way. That is all par for the course in Thailand. Why then did he take ages when filing up the fuel tank just outside of Bangkok? There seems to be something very strange in the way that drivers travel at break neck speed and then dawdle when not behind the wheel. Maybe they should move marginally faster and drive slightly slower? Or is that too radical an idea?