Last night we noted there were many taxi’s so we knew it wouldn’t be difficult to get one in the morning. We had a good sleep and a quick breakfast and by 6:45 AM we checked out of the hotel and were out on the street where we waited, and waited, and waited for a taxi to appear. With nothing happening we went back to hotel reception so they could order a cab. Nope, no can do! Well SH-T!
Back again on the street waiting, a local transit mini bus stopped for us. It is a small Toyota truck with an elongated truck bed in the back, a rudimentary rain cover and two benches (each bench running down a side of the truck box) that sits ten people. Driver confirms he is going to the airport (at least we think he confirms it!) We are passengers nine and ten (and with our luggage). Soon passengers 11,12, and 13 are standing on the purpose built tailgate rack. Most passengers are older kids going to school.
Hmmmm! We are concerned. Did we make a huge error? I pull out my cell phone and check on google maps. We “seem” to be going in the right direction. By now all the kids are gone and there is just one lady and ourselves. The driver pulls into a bus station and the lady gets out. The driver assures us he will take us to the airport and sure enough, 15 minutes later we are there. We are dry mouthed and relieved!. We need to be smarter than that in the future.
On the bright side we did get to see more of the city of Krabi at a slower speed (sarcasm).
I had been concerned about our flight as I never received any e-mail confirmation from the airline so we anticipated needing time in the airport in case things went sideways. I had screen-shot the website confirmation of our flight reservation code when we booked and that was all we needed. Things went smoothly after that. This time it was Caro’s turn to get things more thoroughly checked in security. Also this is the first airport I have been to that really worries (and inspects) cell phone power banks.
The flight was good and in Bangkok we were moved to the terminal via people mover buses. Our bags made it too so now all we had to do was find the hotel shuttle. Turns out this caused us grief. I thought that the hotels would be doing regular rounds to and from their hotels like in Edmonton however this was not the case. We were outside looking for vans from local hotels but after a while it was clear something was different here. After getting assistance from a few different people (and one of them phoning our hotel on his own phone to ask them about the shuttle) we were directed back into the chaotic terminal where we eventually realized there is an area with many small hotel placards attached to railings. When you find your hotel placard there is a person there who somehow is connected to that hotel and they phone the hotel and 15 minutes lates the shuttle shows up. OK, now we know (we are using the shuttle a number of times in the next couple of days).
In mid afternoon we stepped out of our air conditioned comfort into the boiling hot temperatures of Bangkok. Down the street was a nice looking restaurant and we had a great meal.
This was Caro’s food; a tasty rice, shrimp combo served with pineapple chunks inside a hollowed out pineapple. Yummy!
We had a swim in the pool and then just got lazy. We are up very early tomorrow as we have to be in downtown Bangkok by 8:45 AM (and will use the airport shuttle, the train, the metro and finally a taxi to get to the same place we took the night river cruise about four weeks ago).
