After a few weeks of visiting family and friends and getting and recovering from Covid, it was finally time to start travelling again. Dave and I were very excited to be heading to Thailand and start backpacking again. We had backpacked around South East Asia 5 years ago and we were desperate to get back there. But first, we had a few days of travelling to get there and we had to conquer travelling through the UK during a nationwide rail strike and mass chaos at all UK airports following Covid staff shortages.
Due to the rail shortages, our train to Stansted had actually been cancelled a few days before and there were no trains running at all from Bournemouth/ the south of England where we were staying with Dave’s parents. Luckily there were national express buses running though and we had managed to book ourselves on one to London and then one a few hours later to Stansted. Our initial journey to London Victoria was relatively painless apart from struggling a bit with the motion of the bus. We made good time on the journey though and arrived at Victoria ahead of schedule. We had booked a later bus to Stansted so we didn’t have to rush. This gave us time to get the all-important lunch and just around the corner from the coach station is Market Street Victoria, which is an old dance hall that has been turned into a street food venue. There were slightly fewer stalls there than when we had visited prior to Covid but the dumpling stall was still open (Baozinn) and Dave also got a fried chicken burger. We had a celebratory beer/ cider as we had gotten really hot carrying our luggage, with London being 26 degrees and to celebrate that we were on the start of an 18-month adventure.
After a delicious lunch, we walked back to the coach station. We attempted to get on an earlier coach as we had flexible tickets however because of all the strikes they were only taking people for their allocated time. Instead, we got a very average cup of coffee from Black Sheep Coffee across the way. We then loaded onto our 4 pm coach and headed for Stansted. Due to the traffic because of the strikes progress through London was very slow. We had plenty of entertainment though as the people behind us thought the coach was due to get in at 5.20 pm and their flight was at 6.40 pm, when in fact the coach was due to get in at 6.20 pm listening to this realisation was interesting! Actually, the coach ended up not getting there due to 7.30 pm and there were definitely a lot of people rushing to get inside unsure if they would make their flights. Thankfully we had travelled up to Stansted the day before our flight, as we needed to be there early and were staying at the Radisson Blu, due to Dave’s dad's free Hotels.com points (thanks Steve!).
We checked into the hotel and then went to the airport to check out where to go for security. Over recent weeks/months there has been chaos at UK airports with security queues lasting hours and lots of people missing their flights. There was no queue out of security and no queue at fast track that we could see so that was a relief. We headed back to the hotel for some dinner, having a pizza to fill us up for the long journey the next day. As well as security worries, there was also the stress that we were taking 3 separate flights so needed them all to be on time, we were trying to travel with hand luggage way over the weight limits of the carriers and to add to the stress we also were unable to check in online for our main middle flight from Copenhagen to Thailand so we would have to figure out how to check in when we were at the airport trying to transfer. We went to bed early as we were waking up at 4 am to try to conquer this journey!
Bleary-eyed but slightly refreshed from an early morning shower we walked over to the airport for our first flight with Ryanair from Stansted to Copenhagen. As we were worried about security we had booked fast track through security for 3 hours before our flight. As it turns out this was a great call as there was barely any queue and we were through security in 10 minutes, now we had 3 hours to kill! Security was absolutely rammed for 5am, with apparently everyone there really early. All restaurants and cafes had tail-back queues. But as we were so early we were in no rush. We joined the queue for comptoir libanias, a Lebanese restaurant where we could have a sit-down breakfast. The staff were super friendly, the place was colourfully decorated and the food was excellent, Lebanese take on a fry up. After stretching out as much time as we could here we waited for half an hour in the quiet seating area and then headed to the gate when it was officially announced. We were only there 2 minutes when they began boarding. The whole flight was painless and we were there in 2 hours.
Now for the stressful bit, navigating how to check in/ get boarding passes when we were already through security due to transferring there. We had no idea how to do this so we were directed to the transfer area. This took us to an area with our gate, some restaurants and passport control, but no check-in counters or facilities. We rushed to the gate to see if anyone was there that could help us but it was too early and there was no one about it. Instead, we rushed all the way back again and had to go through passport control to get to the transfer centre. Initially, it looked like the queues were going to take ages but they opened more counters. We found the transfer centre only to be told that they weren’t able to give us boarding passes and these were going to be issued at the boarding gate. Crossing everything that this was actually correct we stopped for a cheeky Copenhagen hot dog (where the guy serving was so slow!) and as tasty as it was I didn’t enjoy it as I was so stressed. After wolfing it down we had to make our way back through passport control again and all the way back to the gate- right at the end of all the gates. Thankfully there was a Thai airways staff member there who confirmed that boarding passes would be issued there but that it was a colleague that was going to do it in a few minutes.
A few minutes went by, then half an hour and we were stressed that we still didn’t have them. There were also other people though that had been told the same thing and were waiting. A few minutes before boarding was due to start the colleague arrived and we went up to get our boarding passes. This was only the case as at the minute we still required a Thai pass to be checked to board the flight. We had all this paperwork but then they asked to see evidence of a flight or journey leaving Thailand… panic ensues as we didn’t have one. We showed them the booking we had for a house sit in Malayasia after Thailand but this wasn’t sufficient. So we had to leave the queue to get boarding passes and quickly book some flights. We managed to just panic book flights to Malaysia and more than we wanted to pay as we had no time to look at them and got issued our boarding pass literally 2 minutes before our rows were asked to board. I have never been so grateful to actually get on a flight. All stress prior to this the few days before was us worrying about them checking the weight of our luggage- which they didn’t care about at all! Finally sat on the flight and adrenaline dissipating we were actually able to get excited about the fact that we were heading to Thailand!!
It was a 10-hour flight but it was relatively painless. There were lots of kids around us that were quite noisy but we watched some films, and got served a nice but random dinner of Thai green curry with a mixture of other things before trying to sleep a bit. Neither of us ever really find it possible to sleep on planes but we gave it a go. In the morning we were served breakfast which again was a mix of things- cream cheese omelette, croissant, yoghurt, fruit and other bits and pieces. I never find plane food that bad. We arrived in Bangkok at 6 am, we had made it to Thailand, and it was chucking it down.. it is the rainy season.
We still had another flight to go through. Navigating our way to our next flight to Samui was a lot more straightforward. We followed signs for transfers to domestic places, had our Thai pass checked and then got given a sticker to say this had been checked. Bangkok airways had a counter where we had to get a physical printout of our boarding pass before joining the queue for Bangkok Airways to have all our paperwork checked again. After this, we headed behind this desk to the domestic passport control. The queues for this took a long time and I am glad we didn’t have an early flight. But we eventually had our fingerprints checked, our photo taken and stamps with our visa on arrival put in our passports… officially in Thailand! After this, we headed straight to the gate to wait for our flight. Again despite the 5kg weight limit for cabin bags no one even flinched at our bags and we were on our final flight. 50 minutes later we were in Koh Samui.
The heat was intense straight away but the airport was nice and small, everything in basically 2 rooms. We grabbed cash from an ATM, got sim cards (all 3 providers sell in the arrivals hall) and then grabbed a shuttle bus from the smack1 counter to Lamai (150 baht pp to Lamai) where we had accommodation booked. WE ARE IN THAILAND!!! More about our time in Lamai in the next blog.
Thanks
Alex
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