C&L Bangkok, Elephant Hills & Phuket adventure - March 2017 - Travel day

[LN89]

C&L Bangkok, Elephant Hills & Phuket adventure - March 2017

Travel day(s)

Welcome to my trip report for our recent Thailand holiday . We had the most amazing two weeks and are sad to be back . My pre-trippie can be found here.

Our flight was leaving Heathrow at 9:20pm so we just got up and had a normal Saturday to start with.

Chris dropped me down to our local station with the bags at 3:15, he was then taking the car back to the house and walking back down. I must've looked pretty funny as he dropped me outside the station and I was then trying to get two suitcases and two rucksacks onto the platform . I worked out an effective system of moving it all in the end!



Chris got back to the station just in time for the train and we were on our way to Victoria. We don't really like Heathrow in terms of shops and restaurants and much prefer Gatwick, so we had already decided to go for a late lunch near Victoria as we'd also get food on the plane later on. We popped to Nando's near Victoria.



We finished our meal about 4:45 and headed to the tube to go to Heathrow Terminal 3. The journey is fine and pretty easy but it seems to take a very long time.

We had checked in online and had to print our luggage tags on a machine then queued to drop the bags off. The queue was pretty long and took over half an hour. We eventually got to the front then headed through security without any problems by about 6:45. Our cases were about 23kg and 17kg, we were a bit worried as we had a flight three days later where our luggage allowance was 20kg each so we would need to make sure the cases were a bit more even!

I spent a while talking to my mum on the phone who had just got back from New York. My parents loved the sound of our NY trip last year and had basically copied it.

After I finished on the phone we found a bar called La Salle and had a glass of wine each, Chris just went for a small as he'd been sampling many whiskeys in duty free ! The two glasses came to £14.



We just sat in the bar until our gate was shown at 8:05 then went to find out gate . We boarded at 8:50.



I've never flown with Eva air before but was very impressed. The planes seemed to have more leg room than other airlines we've flown with. There didn't seem loads of overhead space as a lot of people had small cases but we found room for our rucksacks.

Food was served pretty quickly, about an hour into the flight. We both had chicken rendang and it was really nice, along with a white wine. We both watched Moana, this was the first time we'd both watched it and we loved it ! Can't believe we hadn't seen it before (I downloaded the song when we arrived in Bangkok and listened to it daily for the rest of the holiday)!





I didn't really sleep on the flight and spent most of the time trying to get comfy. Chris managed to get some sleep. About 3 hours before landing I gave up trying to sleep and watched fantastic beasts. I love this film!

They turned the lights on about 2 hours before landing. They served food which was pork noodles, this was nice but felt strange as our bodies thought it was breakfast time so I didn't eat much.



We landed fine, it was now about 3pm Bangkok time the next day. It was a long walk to immigration, which also had a long queue, however it was moving pretty fast. I got through first and spotted our bags straight away on the carousel so briskly walked over to get them off.

We had a transfer waiting for us and we found her easily, she took us to our hotel which was about a 30 minute drive.



Our guide was really informative and helpful but we were both pretty tired so don't think we were as enthusiastic as we should've been! We checked in and were given a room on the 17th floor, this had great views over Bangkok. There wasn't any hotel information in the room though which we found strange, reception had told us the times of breakfast but we didn't know which restaurant. We also didn't know where to find the pool and a few other things! We thought it was a bit odd and maybe just the book was missing.





Lovely view from our room:





We got showered and changed and headed out about 6 for a wander. It was still very hot. We wandered round for a while, finding our bearings. We stopped off at a little cafe for dinner, we ordered a Fanta and coke, pork satay, chicken massamam curry and pork fried noddles. This was really good and a nice first meal of the holiday it came to about 400bht plus tip (about £10).

£1 = about 43 baht, so we estimated it for the holiday by dividing by 40 to get a rough price in English (which is what I'll do for this trippie). It took me quite a long time to get my head round it, I ended up dividing by 4 each time then x 10 as kept getting confused.







We continued our wander round, there were lots of market stalls and we just enjoyed the atmosphere. We stopped of at a 7/11 (these were everywhere) and got a beer and wine sparkler to have in the room while we relax. These were 82 baht (about £2). We were pretty tired now after the long day/ two days traveling so headed back to the room to relax and went to bed about 10.



It was going to be hot the next day!

[tracy99]

Ooh,a Thailand trippie,look forward to reading this.
Haven't been to Bangkok,for a few years,but we have been to Khao lak,for the past 3 years & love it.
Look forward to reading along,
Tracy x

[Melbatb]

Great first day!

Bangkok is high on my list of places to visit so will be following

[LN89]

Originally Posted by tracy99

Ooh,a Thailand trippie,look forward to reading this.
Haven't been to Bangkok,for a few years,but we have been to Khao lak,for the past 3 years & love it.
Look forward to reading along,
Tracy x

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Ah thank you I've heard Khoa Lak is lovely, would love to go but we didn't have chance to visit. Too many places we want to go .

[LN89]

Originally Posted by Melbatb

Great first day!

Bangkok is high on my list of places to visit so will be following

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Thanks! Definitely recommend it, different to what I expected. It also surprised me how different KL and Bangkok were.

[christybell]

Currently researching Thailand fro 2018, so pleased you have shared your trip with us

[Excitedx4]

A nice seamless travel day, we fly to Bangkok in October/November. How did you find the time difference?

[LN89]

Originally Posted by christybell

Currently researching Thailand fro 2018, so pleased you have shared your trip with us

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Hi, didn’t see this comment so sorry! Did you book Thailand? Xx

[LN89]

Originally Posted by Excitedx4

A nice seamless travel day, we fly to Bangkok in October/November. How did you find the time difference?

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Hi, thank you for reading we woke up in the early hours which was a bit frustrating but we try to get on with in the day so our body got used to the time difference.

[Jakey Neverland]

Glad the flight was good we are flying Evaair also I have no idea what the childrens meals I have ordered will turn out to be though lol!

Looks like a great start, I am so hoping we all manage some sleep on the flight.