Day: 425
Today started early, like 4:30am early. Felicia, The charming woman she is, insisted on getting up with me and driving to the airport instead of letting me cab it, so I am pretty sure her day to come was going to be miserable with no sleep. After our goodbyes I jumped on my budget Tiger Air flight to Bangkok, and when I go to my seat with very little legroom it looked odd. It was an aisle seat and the seat itself slanted toward he aisle. When I sat down the seat was everything it looked to be, broken and angled.
Finally after 2 hours and a misaligned spine, I arrived at Bangkok’s international airport. I needed to transfer to their old, domestic airport which was on the other side of this traffic ridden city. Unfortunately my Lonely Planet left out the best way to do this and I was on my own. Of course the taxi drivers outside the airport all told me it was impossible to do by bus and I would miss my flight if I tried, for $35 they could get me there on time though. I saw a free airport shuttle with a line of locals, I pushed passed the touts who were screaming lower prices as I walked by, and queued up for a shuttle bus to who knows where.
The shuttle dropped me a a local bus station which had a bus sitting there labeled “Don Meung” (the smaller airport), and I jumped on, garnering another quizzical look from the locals on the bus seeing as I was the only foreigner there. The bus skirted the city center and most of the traffic and within 45 minutes I was at the domestic airport, all for $1.10. I was feeling like my travel skills were still sharp and ready for my next hour long budget flight to the Laos border, with NokAir, who actually has an add on their webpage which says “We Taste Better”! That alone made me excited for a better tasting flight.
The flight north was empty, and I was given an entire exit row to myself and was able to stretch out with ample legroom and a pretzel wrapped hotdog in my hands. When I got off I found a reasonably priced shuttle to the Laos border where I paid my $35 and was issued a 30day visa. coming out on the Laos side I hoped in a Tuk-Tuk (a sort of expanded motorcycle, to taxi people about) and rode into town where I found a pleasant room for $4.50.
After a shower and some reorganization of my bag, I headed out into the setting sun to find some food, and perhaps a couple of pictures. Two Beer Laos, a bowl of noddles, and a few sticks of satay later, the sun had set and I set off to bed early, exhausted from an entire day on the road.
