Arrival
The adventure began in NC for me and Afghanistan for Ten, we met up in Dubai to travel to Thailand together. Construction in JFK and confusion over my ticket, I plead with the ticket counter to help me before they closed for the day. Then I ran and ran and ran. I made it through the security checkpoint and ran some more, shoes and belt in hand. I listened to my name repeated over the loudspeaker, landing at the gate seconds from missing my flight. I get to my seat and we sat there for an hour before taking off. Oh well, I made it.
Upon landing in Bangkok, we found an ATM machine and took out some cash for the week. Traveling by taxi seemed to be the easiest way to get to our guesthouse from the airport. But, there are a handful of other options for travel into Bangkok (go here). Print out addresses in Thai to give to your driver, the English map may only make sense to you.
I did extensive research before the trip and settled on a little guest house on the grounds of a temple. Loy La Long is a teak house that sits on the Chao Phraya River in the Chinatown area of Bangkok.
I read about not taking any wooden nickels. They say that some tuk-tuk drivers will take you to a place you did not want to go, instead taking you to a restaurant or shop that gives them a kickback for bringing business to them. We wanted to go to the market down the street from our guesthouse, we let our driver convince us to go to a “better” market. We took the wooden nickel and ended up far away from our beginning point. I had no idea where we were, except in front of a restaurant. Ugh. I was so frustrated that I did not want to take a tuk-tuk back to the guest house. It was a long walk back to Loy La Long, but lined in silver. We found ourselves in the middle of bright lights, herds of people and shops galore. We walked beyond the bright lights and street vendors, we came upon a Marriott Hotel. Our guesthouse was still another hour away, I gave in and called a taxi––much to Ten’s relief.
