Germany Doesn't Suck

(due to lack of time). Written on 2 Jan 2008

The trip north stated when my new alarm clock rudely woke me up at 7h. I didn’t sleep well because I didn’t get to bed til 2h and was worried that I’d sleep through the alarm (I had also set the alarm on my mobile phone just in case). I had a shower, packed the few things I wasn’t able to pack the night before (toiletries, the clothes I had warn the day before, etc), checked out and headed towards the Skytrain station.

I was leaving Bangkok – a city that I totally love. The towering skyscrapers, the elegant shopping malls, the beer gardens, the magnificent temples, etc. I love it.

Arriving at the Skytrain station, I noticed something – the escalator was going down instead of up – the direction it was going when I scoped it out the day before. That annoyed me as I had specifically crossed the road (not an easy feat in Bangkok) so that I could use it and not have to go up all those stairs with my backpack and carry-on bag. Oh well, up the stairs I went.

I had to switch to the other line at Siam and the entire Skytrain journey took me about 20 minutes to reach the Mo Chit station. From there, I went down the stairs to the bus stop and the bus I had been told to take (29 or 59) arrived in about five minutes. The rest of the trip to the airport took twenty more minutes and then I went up the skywalk, over many lanes of traffic and then down the other side and proceeded into the airport with plenty of time to spare.

I was at the old airport – Don Muang Airport (DMK).

Yes, Bangkok does have a spiffy and modern new airport that I usually use, but not for this flight. What happened was when the new airport was opened in late September 2006, it was just about at capacity and that was causing flight delays and other passenger discomforts as well as high landing fees. So, some of the airlines petitioned the air transportation authority for the old airport to be reopened rather than wait for more runways to be built at the new airport and in March 2007, Don Muang Airport was reopened for domestic flights. Thai moved some its there and Nok Air – the airline I was flying north on moved all of its domestic flights there. I hadn’t sought out Nok Air for this flight, I went by price and was well aware that this flight was leaving from that airport and figured there still had to be ways to get there (the Airport Bus service only goes to the new airport).

Check in was a breeze and then I returned outside to wait for my flight. Why? Because the air conditioning was turned up too high inside the terminal and I was freezing. I wasn’t the only one that felt that way because quite a few others were waiting outside too.

The flight was uneventful, other than the Screaming Baby Choir that started just before we took off, and an hour later we were in Udon Thani. However, that wasn’t my destination, so I caught a shared van to Nong Khai (54 km) for 150 THB and forty minutes later I was where I’d be spending a couple days before going to Laos.