Day 1 - 27 June - Knowing the airports

It's 6 am and I'm on Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok. Am I:

Sleepy? For sure
Tired? Well, kinda
Exhilarated? Not yet

Yup, I'm finally on my long pending holiday, but:

1. I just came by an arbit Thai Airways flight. Don't know if the flight attendants had fought with management / were underpaid / were just plain disgusted with all the Indians on the flight but they certainly did not seem to want to be there. No smiles on their faces, people who had asked for veg food being served fish, me getting only one hour of sleep (ok, that wasn't their fault, but still...). So anyway, I did not have a great flight.

2. there's still some way to go before my holiday really starts - 11 hrs, to be precise (half a day, to be approximate). First, I have to wait for Chinu's flight, which reaches at 10:20 am. Then, we have to wait for the other guys (Ganapathy a.k.a. Gana, Shivaditya a.k.a. Shiva and Rupen), who are already holidaying in Bangkok, to come in, for the 1:45 pm flight we have to take to Phuket. Basically, I have to do exactly what I loathe doing!

To nullify the effect, I decide to indulge in my favourite activity, namely, eating. :D A word on the airport first though.

The Suvarnabhumi Airport started operation in 2006, so it’s a pretty new airport. And it’s huge. I knew that even before I was out of the airport by the amount we were made to walk before we got to the immigration + baggage claim area (God bless travelators, or rather, the guy who invented it). The design is modern, but nothing out of this world. Somewhere, I feel, the bland grey that most airports seem to prefer nowadays makes them a place to not want to be. Which is not exactly what they should aspire to, given the number of shops on airports these days. I found Frankfurt, with its colourful lights (in Germany, of all places!) much better. The duty-free shops I came across sell pretty much the same stuff that you see anywhere, though I did not see any really big or impressive ones.

Anyway, a quick stop at the immigration (from where I was directed to go back to another place to get my visa – what happened to single window clearance?!) and baggage pickup later, I was out fending off people who were dying to offer me their taxis. No use trying to explain to them that I had to catch another flight, since the only English words they knew (as far as I could figure) were ‘Taxiiii?!’ and ‘Siiiiiiiir’ (said with a particularly nasal sound).

So, coming back to my favourite sport, I roamed around for a bit, looking at what food was on offer. There wasn’t much for veggies like me, but I was overjoyed to find Starbucks ☺ Chalo, atleast I could feast on good coffee while I was being made to wait. After paying an obscene amount for a cappuccino and savoring it (the last Starbucks Cappuccino I has was a year ago), I roamed around for a bit more – or probably a lot more, since the guy standing outside one of the restaurants (to beckon people in) actually started recognizing me and giving me a broad smile whenever I passed by! I also used the time I had to get some dollars exchanged, browse through stores selling books written in Thai, harbor thoughts about abandoning all care about my luggage and taking a nap, using the restroom, getting myself the heavenly double chocolate chip muffin from Starbucks, stare into infinity and roam around once more so my legs didn’t develop deep coronary thrombosis (or whatever is that ailment that you get when you sit for long periods on a cramped airplane seat).

Finally, Chinu arrived. Well, ok, it wasn’t as simple as that. He came and somehow managed to bypass my gaze and went straight to the domestic departure lounge, where I found him after I had spent an exasperating half an hour waiting for him at the arrival point. So anyway, after the customary “Kya haal chaal hain be?”, he decided to drop a bomb on me. He and the other guys were actually booked on a flight one hour later than the one I was taking (which, as Chinu had told me earlier, was supposed to be the one they were taking too). And then, Air Asia (the shittiest airline in the world – after the erstwhile Air Deccan, that is) decided to make it a double whammy. Both our flights were delayed by about an hour each! And booking myself on the flight these guys were taking would cost me the full fare with no refund for my existing ticket. I hope you now understand why I wasn’t exhilarated yet! So anyway, I decided not to splurge so early on my trip and take the flight I was booked on and wait at the Phuket airport.

A decent lunch (cheddar cheese burger) later, I checked in for my flight and arrived at Phuket. I again used my time to stare into infinity (I had gotten pretty good at it by that time), get my self an expensive Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and donut and compare prices on all products at the couple of stores at the airport (it’s amazing how 2 stores 50 meters apart can have prices that vary by 20-25% for exactly the same products!).

Anyway, so the guys finally arrived. No confusion this time since the airport is pretty small. We went to the hotel reservation counter at the airport itself and picked out Royal Crown Hotel, the most budget place we could find (the other 3 were running over budget on their trip). The trip to the hotel was pretty interesting for various reasons. First, Phuket, despite being a beach town, is also a hilly place, and affords scenic views to anyone who cares to look out of the car window. The roads are also beautiful – broad and with no potholes. Second, I had my first encounter with a ladyboy! The taxi driver stopped the car at some place, and a (decent looking) woman who has the voice of a man comes out and urges us to stay at a hotel closer to the beach for only a 100 Baht per night extra charge. We (as in, everyone except Gana) refuse. Gana, meanwhile, is zapped at having some woman (or so it seems) creep up so close to him! We all have our doubts, but as we pull out of the place, the driver confirms that it was a ladyboy!

The hotel turns out to be a very nice place, and at the price we’ve paid for it, it’s awesome. We all freshen up and decide to go out for a walk to have a look at Phuket nightlife. We first have a Thai curry and rice dinner (for the first time I really liked Thai food!) at a budget place. Then Rupen, the official map reader, gives directions (that not everyone listens to) and we reach Bangla road. We cross several Thai massage shops on the way, with women outside shouting “Siiiiiiiiiiiiir, siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiir!” or “Massaaannnnnge, massaaaannnnnge”, which can get a little irritating after a while, given the density of massage shops in the area. It was amazing to see the number of ladyboys on Bangla road. I think there were more ladyboys there than women. And some of them look so much like women that after a while we weren’t sure which was which! In fact, we could’ve turned it into a guessing game, with the person with the highest number of correct guesses getting a beer from us, but we didn’t because of the operational issue of how we would verify and also because none of us thought of it at the time.

After getting back we (especially Gana and I) got into an intense discussion on what to do the following day. Gana (and the others?) wanted to go to Phi Phi Island, which meant waking up at about 6:30-7:00 am. I was in favour of roaming around the city. Gana’s logic was that going to Phi Phi the next day gave them the option of doing something that might require more than a day over the next couple of days (we were there for two and a half more days). My logic was that I was on a holiday, and that, in my book, did not include two consecutive nightouts / near-nightouts. Also, they didn’t have any concrete idea (except roaming around the city) for the rest of the days anyway. So I decided to sell a call option on their idea and told them that I did not mind them going to Phi Phi the next day without me (and wouldn’t want to stop them too) and that I would go there the day after. With this, it was 2:30 AM and lights off time!

How I got here

I'm warmly snuggled up in my bed at the Baan Saen Doi Resort & Spa in Chiang Mai while it's pouring outside, with my evening coffee on the bedside table and my laptop, well, in my lap... life, in short, couldn't get much better. But, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself, way ahead. Let's start from from how I got to this country in the first place.

Those of you who know me well (and I don't expect those who don't to be reading this blog anyway), would know that I've spent most of my last 6 months sitting at home, working on TWISH (our startup), with no friends in town and not many options for going out. Let me tell you a little secret, that life gets to you after a while! So I was desperate for a holiday, if only to go as far as Ranchi, pay my respects to Dhoni's statue (is it up yet?) and come back.

As you would also know, most of my friends (including you?) are employed and are not yet at that stage of their career when they can take a break from office whenever I demand so. So I was desperately short of company. Chinmay (Chinu) was going on a trip to Thailand with his friends but he would be there only for the last 3 days of his friends' trip, and I thought piling onto his friends was probably not the besst thing to do. Pankaj (Pango) postponed his proposed Himalayan trek for reasons beyond his control (no, he couldn't change Madhur's marriage date to suit his holiday plans). So I kept postponing my holiday plans so I could find someone to go with.

And then, one day, it happened - my famously large patience ran out, and I said to myself, "To hell with plans and company and piling on and whatnot... I'm outta here! Chinu, you're going to have some elite company (finally) on your trip!" A quick call to Chinu and a few credit card transactions later, I was booked on a trip to Thailand starting in a couple of days. Woohoo!

The initial idea was to travel around the country as and when I pleased, but I realized over the next couple of days that I had grown too old for that kinda thing (good for me, or I wouldn't have gotten my visa on arrival without the return ticket) and booked hotels and tickets for the places I was going to visit. I was ready to holiday!

Now I know you'll get bored if you read my whole travelogue together, so I'm going to divide my posts by day (better read all of them now). You're most welcome to leave comments, especially those that praise my writing skills and tell me that I look really good in the photographs. Enjoi!