Bangkok 12/12/2007

Passenger get down from airplane and going to board the airport bus.

Touch down at Bangkok airport around 5pm bangkok time. Because we are on budget ariline (AirAsia), we still have to take their airport bus to the airport terminal itself. So luckily there is no raining. The custom clearance is smooth and after we out from the airport, we straight away go to their tourist information counter to get Bangkok maps. The staff is friendly but if you want to ask which airport express to take to bring you to your hotel destination, is better you go to the airport express counter to check out yourself.

The airport express counter is located one level below the arrival hall. Is near exit 8. It shouldn't be a problem finding it as the sign is clear. It costs you 150b per trip and there are 4 service lines. So get your hotel address in hand and ask the staff there on which line to take. They will more than happy to guide you in this. For us, we stay at Bangkok City Inn which is near Pratunam, so we are asked to take AE1. Got to wait for a while for the bus to arrived. IF you travel in more than 2 persons, it might be wiser to take cab. The cab cost should be not more than 400b.

The journey to our hotel take about 30 minutes to 45 minutes. The traffic is still consider smooth for us except a bit of traffic jam when we about to reach Pratunam (the time is around 7pm). the bus driver will actually let us know when it stops at Pratunam. So don't need to worry you will miss the stop. The hotel is actually quite near to the bus stop we alight. however since it is not along the major road side, it might take you a while to locate it. My advice is to ask the local Thai which will be more than happy to guide you. Although they can't really guide you through proper English but their hand sign is always useful. In this case, you know you won't head to the wrong direction.

The hotel is actually like hotel 81 in Singapore. Check in process is straight forward (I book the hotel through sawadee.com and it costs me 1050b per night). The hotel is consider Ok for this price range. The surprise thing is there is a bath tub. The hotel is actually near to some shopping centers. The BTS station (Bangkok SkyTrain) is about 10 minutes walking distance.

View from my hotel windows. Big-C departmental store is just in front of it.

After resting for a while, we head straight to Big C for our dinner and daily necessities (water, shampoo, bath foam). By the time we reach Big-C, is already around 9pm, most of the eating place are closing down so end up we have our dinner at Yum Saap. Turn out is not a bad eating place with nice food. Generally, i find most of the foods in Bangkok are not bad. After dinner we head to Big-C departmental store to buy our necessities. We go back hotel early to rest early as we know there will be a lot of walking start from tomorrow. :)