Checking in for our domestic Bangkok Airways flight in the Chiang Mai airport took less than five minutes. With some time to kill, we wandered around the gate area and happened to discover a coffee shop that had paprika potato chips! (If you don’t know, paprika potato chips are one of my most favorite snacks ever.) I did my little “paprika chips” dance, which embarrassed my husband to no end but seemed to amuse the couple behind us in line.
The Bangkok Airways flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok is scheduled for an hour and a half. Boarding was slightly chaotic but once settled in on the A320, it was a peaceful and dare I say, enjoyable flight. The legroom was incredible, they served a light meal, the flight attendants were friendly. Overall, I have to say that Bangkok Airways is one of my favorite air carriers now. (Too bad I live in a country that doesn’t have regularly scheduled Bangkok Airways flights. U.S. air carriers could take a lesson – but they won’t, of course.)
The mountains of northern Thailand gave way to the flatlands near the coast. As we were on our approach to the Suvarnabhumi Airport, I got a sense of how big the sprawling metropolis of Bangkok really is. Our flight arrived at a remote gate, meaning we had to squish into a bus to take us from the plane to the actual airport. Grabbing our suitcases from baggage claim, we made our way to the train station. I opted to take the train into the city because I had read that Bangkok traffic can be an absolute nightmare at times. As it was, we spent nearly an hour – the first on the airport train and then transferring to a subway line (the transfers between the Airport Rail Link and the MRT stations require a walk of at least 10 minutes, outside in the heat but under a canopy of sorts). I think we confused the doorman of our hotel when we walked up dragging our bags behind us.
He quickly recovered once he realized that we were actually staying at the hotel, just crazy for being pedestrians. We were welcomed with a fragrant flower bracelet (although it might have been to try to disguise the stinky smell I was generating). The staff were even then more nonplussed to discover that I had a reservation for a club-level room. So they hustled us up to the club-level lounge to complete check-in. (I had gotten a crazy good deal for the room with a bunch of vouchers for cocktails and massages through a members-only hotel sales website I like to browse when I want to take my mind off work.)
Our one-bedroom suite was calming after the day of travel. We tested out the shower, lounged around on the window daybed for a bit, and then decided to check out the lounge happy hour. The servers in the lounge kept topping off my wine glass and the next thing I knew, we had drank and snacked our way right through dinner time. We decided to head up to the open-air bar on the 54th floor to check out the view (and this wasn’t the highest floor bar either). The view was spectacular. I had to keep reminding myself that I was looking at Bangkok, that it was real, that I had made it to a city that seemed so strange and foreign and exotic. There are times when I travel that it hits me sideways to realize that the little girl who spent hours staring at an atlas and dreaming of seeing the world with her own eyes is the same person now sitting on a bar stool 54 stories above one of those fabled cities. Travel gives me a sense of the same wonder that I had as a child, a sense of wonder that sometimes seems to be nonexistent in my day-to-day adult life.
Bangkok Skyline, November 2018
The next day, we walked all over the damn place. Heat and humidity be damned, we had exploring to do. We ended up at the river, where massive preparations for the Loy Krathong festival were taking place. We ducked into the riverside lobby bar at the Shangri-La for a break of AC and a drink where we had a front-row seat to the hustle and bustle. I discovered that there was a free riverboat ferry to the other side to the large and ridiculously over-the-top IconSiam mall. Basically, I just wanted to ride a riverboat for free; but on the other side, we had to duck inside to check it out. In addition to pretty much the standard and higher end mall stores, there’s a Rolls Royce dealership inside! Outside, there was a huge stage and VIP seating for the festivities that began at dusk. We ended up catching the ferry back across while the full moon was rising over the skyscrapers. People were scrambling to buy their last-minute Loy Krathong offerings, beautiful wreaths of leaves, candles, and flowers. As night fell, people lit the candles and sent their wreaths into the river. It was an incredible sight (but one that was impossible to photograph well because there were so many people jammed onto the piers, I was more worried about not getting pushed into the river).
After watching the ceremony, we crammed our way up to the Sky Train station with a million other people and tried to not lose each other in the crush. My claustrophobia was really kicking into gear at that point. Getting off the train at the closest stop to our hotel was like a cool drink of water after wandering the desert for days. We were still a pretty far distance from our hotel but at that point, I didn’t care. I wanted to just get out of a confined space filled to maximum capacity. My husband flagged down a tuk-tuk to get us the rest of the way to the hotel and although we got stuck in a massive traffic jam, it was a fun way to get around the city that didn’t require walking in a massive crowd.
Because it was Thanksgiving in the States, we decided to treat ourselves to a really nice dinner. We had reservations for the rooftop restaurant and by the time we made it back to the hotel, we had to hurry to get ready. On the 60th floor, the elevator let us out and then we still needed to walk up two flights of stairs to reach the restaurant. Finally settled at our seats and with a cocktail in hand, we got to see the fireworks celebrating Loy Krathong. It was a pretty incredible day.
The next day, we did a bit of wandering in the nearby park before heading back to the hotel for our spa appointment. We figured that a massage using our vouchers would be a perfect way to unwind after the strenuous day before (according to my iPhone pedometer, we had walked just about 10 miles in the heat and humidity). My massage left me pretty much incoherent in the best possible way. I was out of it for the rest of the day. Despite the multitudes of things we didn’t see or do or experience while we’re in Bangkok, I couldn’t muster up the energy for anything more than trying to find dinner. The obligatory meal of Pad Thai was awesome and I slept like a rock that night.
Sadly, our three days in Bangkok were over in a blink of an eye. I barely got to scratch the surface of the city. I definitely feel like I need to return to Bangkok and explore some more. But we had another flight to catch so I checked Google Maps and realized that we could take a taxi to the airport in the same amount of time as it would take to do the public transportation thing. Riding in the A/C sounded like a better way to begin our next phase of the journey so we hopped into a taxi van and made our way to Suvarnabhumi Airport for the onward flight to our next destination.