Day 2: Thursday 25th June 2015
"Sawasdee ka" Thailand!
Blimey, that was a long flight! After I had signed off from
my last post a few of us ‘Tetters” re-grouped at the back of the plane, mostly
by chance! I guess we were drawn to the smell of vodka and (surprisingly
nice-smelling) toilets! We even bagged ourselves a few KitKats and other tasty
treats from the little kitchen area; score!! We wasted about an hour or so
chilling there, having a few drinks, getting in the way of the air stewardesses
and anybody needing the loo. After this I managed to squeeze in about an hour’s
sleep, which I was less than impressed about, seeing as we had a whole day of exploring
Bangkok ahead of us!
Once we were safely off of the plane and into the furnace of
cloudy, humid Bangkok, we were picked up by some lovely British Council people
who drove us to The Royal River Hotel, which we would be staying at for two
nights whilst we completed orientation and registration onto the programme.
We were all so hot
and bothered by the time we got to the hotel (we thought the journey would take
15 minutes but took about an hour!) that we chilled for a bit before heading
out to explore. The same group of us who met at the airport reconvened and went
in search of some tasty street food. This led us to splitting into two groups
and heading into a busier area called Siam Square in two different taxis. As
expected, we lost the other group and ended up spending the whole day as a
four. Our driver insisted he was following them the whole way, thinking we were
stupid enough to believe him.
We thought that was bad… Our taxi home was even worse! After
two or three taxis declining our request to go back to the hotel which was a
fair while away, we managed to get into one and show the driver a map and
address to try and get him to understand where it was. We agreed a price of
200TB (rookie error, always get a cab with a meter) and halfway through the
journey we realised he was going in the complete opposite direction! That was
when he started playing up; demanding more money off us, and saying he would
leave us in the middle of the traffic, so we just said we would get out of the
cab if he was unhappy with it.
That’s when he locked
the doors.
He locked all the doors!! We didn’t want to complain because
clearly, he was in a strange mood, but at the same time we didn’t want to carry
on going further away from our destination. He was playing with us. After about an hour of nervously waiting in
traffic that he purposely put us in, we decided to pay him the full fare of
200TB and he finally let us out, even though we were further away at this point
than we were at the start. When he unlocked those car doors, I think we all felt such a wave of
relief that we would live another day!
 |
| Bangkok traffic is crazy! |
We managed to hail another cab with a cute older driver who
didn’t look up for any hassle. He got us home perfectly, and some of us even
had a little snooze! Once back at the hotel, there was only one plan: dinner,
shower, bed. All before 9pm, too!
I've got to be up bright and early to meet my mentor tomorrow for a long day of orientation and ice breakers so I can't wait to have a nice snooze with my rock solid hotel pillow...
I
wish those “Tetters” luck who went out for drinks tonight; rather you than me!
Olivia
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