Tears + Airports + Bangkok

Where to start? This is the first chance i’ve had to sit down and write about the trip. I still don’t think it’s totally sunk in that I am out of Australia for 12 months (finances permitting). Wednesday was a teary send off though, I thought I was going to be strong and not get emotional but as soon as i picked up my bags and left my room the eyes started to swell. I mean, where else in the entire world can you get a double shower in your room? Oh and I am going to miss my family as well I guess. Seriously though, thanks everyone for coming out to the airport, Fiona and I were really happy to have everyone there. But it was a relief to finally get through those dredded international departure doors because it is pretty wierd to think you won’t see your family and friends for 12 months, it was good to begin to immerse our thoughts in the forthcoming adventure.

The Melbourne to Sydney flight was fairly uneventful, although a few japanese blokes on the flight were taking advantage of free alchohol and running around the plane with those tiny bottles of red wine and pissing off the stewardesses. Once we got to Sydney we were faced with about a 4 hour wait for our flight because we originally thought we had to be there 2 hours before the flight which wasn’t the case because we sent our luggage through straight from Melbourne and of course Fiona wanted to be conservative in our flight timing to allow for any delays in Melbourne (bloody foreward thinking females, love it when they get it wrong). Also someone on our flight lost their passport or something so they had to take off all the luggage from the plane to remove them from the flight. Anyhow Sydney airport oversaw a major dent to our finances in the purchase of a Sony digital camera (DSCP73S if you care) which the pictures I will post on this site in future will be derived from. Not long into my time at Sydney airport I realised just how bloody annoying airport terminals really are. A stupendously loud public address system combined with regular message alert tones certainly rival the torture abilities of the Japanese.

Finally the Sydney to Bangkok flight got under way. Thankfully I got the window seat for the second time in a row (Thanks Fiona). We actually went over the top of Ayers Rock but cloud cover prevented me from actually seeing it. The flight took about 9 hours or so, I slept the first and last 2 hours or so of it and the rest of the time was spent watching the Bourne Supremacy (shithouse), Danny Deckhair (average), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (seen it before) and listening to Radiohead - The Bends (what a relief). I played Solitaire once, I was killing it and then discovered I forgot to remove the Joker cards and rendered the game useless.

The 9 hours actually went pretty quickly and we got our bags and got through immigration in no time at all. To top things off, our accomodation had sent out a 4WD to pick us up. Not bad for $20 or whatever we paid for the room. The accomodation was about 2km from the airport but I reckon we passed about 15 or so 7-11’s, and despite it being midnight on a Wednesday, there were a heap of people out in the streets, and dogs and motorbikes. We stayed at the Erawan Hotel and the room consisted of 2 single beds, luckily Fiona and I were sick of each others company already anyway.

We were awake early today (Wednesday) to catch a business class flight to Chiang Mai because its the only flight we could get, we should have organised a lot of these flights a bit earlier! Upon check-in we were escorted into a VIP lounge and given a wonderful selection of breakfast foods: mini hotdogs with cheese, tuna sandwiches and some really wierd berry juice. I settled for some water and a couple of slices of pineapple. The flight took about 10 minutes or so it seemed and the Chiang Mai experience began. We organised to rent a 400 baht ($13?) room right in the middle of Chiang Mai but they screwed us and said they could only do it for 650 baht ($22). On principle we told them to shove it, although they were really nice thai style wooden places. So we walked to our second choice a couple of blocks away, marvelling at the abundance of temples, buddhists and annoying tuk tuk drivers. This place (Safe House) is pretty basic, but at $10 a night is economical to say the least, besides we couldnt be bothered walking anywhere else. Straight away we threw down our packs and had a Changi Beer in the cafe attached to the accomodation. $1 later we were pissed (6.5%!) and feeling less nervous about the trip. We decided to have a fairly relaxing afternoon and ended up walking to a few nearby temples. There is a major festival (Kwahrong? I should know the name) on tommorow which celebrates the water goddess by locals putting candle lit items in any bodies of water and the place has been thriving in preperation for it. The first temple we went to (Chedi Leung?) had free food stalls which was a bonus and is actually an amazing creation being some 42 metre high temple. They also had a ‘Chat to a monk’ feature which we partook in to learn about Thai culture and to help young monks work on their English. We asked some really touristy questions of our monk until we were satisfied that he thought we were complete jerks and left. Once we got to the third temple, despite its grand architechture, I was suddenly completely sick of temples. Theres not much you can do, just walk around, take off your thongs, kneel a little, light some candles, all things I can do in Australia! We then tried to find a good place to have some lunch and so began our education on the cunning of Chiang Mai inhabitants. To be continued…