Scotland: Travel Trouble

Hal and I started out our journey very early on the morning of April 1st. We flagged down a touri (a large van) and by 6:30 we were on our way to the border town, Poipet. The border on the Thailand side was very crowded and took a long time, but soon enough we were on the Thai side and enjoying a little 7/11 and air conditioning while we waited for our next touri to get enough people to head out to Bangkok. Around 10 we were on our way to Bangkok. I was very surprised they grow real vegetables, and have trees instead of endless rice fields.

We made it to Bangkok and enjoyed some lunch with friends along Kao San road, the popular tourist part of Bangkok. We left them at Paragon shopping mall, and headed to our hotel the On Nut Guesthouse. This is where our travel troubles started. We had written down the wrong address! Oops. Luckily the hotel we showed up at let us use their internet for free as we didn't have a computer or a phone that worked or anything. Finally we found our hotel and checked in, but sadly were over an hour late for meeting our friends and never were able to meet up with them. It's so hard to travel without a computer and cell phone, we discovered. This whole trip we felt what it was like to plan a trip back before computers.

We went on a search around MBK (a shopping mall) for a Gap, which I read online they had a Gap outlet, and a good food court for thai food. Well after wandering around lost since we couldn't find a good map. There are thousands of stores in this mall and if you walk down one hallway on the floor, there's an entire other hallway you can't even see. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Well the mall was closing so we went in search of food, which also ended up being a bust and we settled for some yummy indian. We didn't get to see the Hunger Games either while we were there. Basically Bangkok was a bust this time.

We made it back to our hotel, On Nut Guesthouse which we chose because it was close to the BTS (sky train) so we could get to the airport early in the morning. The hotel was really great. Our bed was super comfortable. The internet wouldn't work on my phone, so they were really nice and let me use their computer for free (it's hard to find free internet in Bangkok). Just wanted to double check on our flights....everything looked good.

We were up at the crack of dawn to make it to the airport in time, we were there and waiting, but found no sign of King Fisher Airline. We kept asking information and they kept sending us to the same place. Finally someone told us our flight was cancelled and that King Fisher no longer operates out of the Bangkok airport. Crap. Crap. Crap. This is where I am very proud of Hal and I. We held it together, and even though we couldn't get a hold of King Fisher(they never answer the phone!) we went to ticket counter after ticket counter asking about their flights to the UK that day. KLM had one to Glasgow leaving a midnight. Full, no go. Thai Airways had one leaving at noon, in like 2 hours. Thai Airways is amazing. We got tickets for not too much more than we wanted, thanks to some deal, and at noon we were headed to London. Once we got past security they had free computers. We sent an e-mail to Hal's parents asking them to look for lights to Glasgow the next day and got a reply "Is this an April Fools joke?" haha, forgot that we're 13 hours ahead and it was still April Fools day there. The flight was great, all of their drinks and food are free! And we even got a show with the couple 2 rows ahead of us verbally assault the couple a row ahead of us for opening their window blind and waking the other couple's child. And we were able to watch that family have a police escort off of the airplane.

We arrived in London around 8 pm and spent a ridiculous amount of money at the airport using the internet (really Heathrow, no free wifi, and for that matter, really the UK no airport free wifi in 3 airports?) It was like a pound of 2 for 10 minutes. That's ridiculous! Anyway, we spent like 10 pounds in order to book a flight the next day to Glasgow. We found a nice deal on Easy Jet, but would have to leave in the afternoon. That ended up working great, because we got to actually see London during the day.

Hal and I were couch surfing that night with a wonderful couple near Tower Hill, and were so nervous because we didn't make it to their house until around 11pm. They were so lovely and stayed up late getting to know us and they even fed us breakfast and told us how to make it to see what we wanted to see and to Gatwick Airport.

We were hoping to leave the bad mojo we had in Bangkok and early London behind, and luckily, we did and we had a fabulous rest of the trip