If I thought day 1 was bad, geez was I in for a surprise.
In Abu Dhabi at the boarding gates and the "waiting areas" are hundreds of seats for you to sit on and wait for your flight. (Pretty standard as all airports have said seats) However in Abu Dhabi, the seats have arms rests! This means that you cannot lie down across 3 or 4 seats, you are forced to sit upright for however many hours you are there and sleep sitting up!
I have a gift, I think I may have been born with it. I have the ability to fall asleep anywhere and at any given time - Small aeroplane seats, in a car, at my desk etc. I have however not attempted sleeping on these small seats siting upright. (Ok, lets just be honest I am never really sitting upright and sleeping. I am always using Warren as a pillow, leaning against him) I was close to making myself comfortable on the floor and curling up there for the night, but since we were not in South Africa, and after hearing how crazy strict Abu Dhabi's laws are i decided to rather not take the chance of pissing the locals off, so I didnt!
We found an area in the airport that have these "lawn chairs" it is reclined so you can actually have a few hours nap on there, thing is, the ratio of chairs to people were off. Long story short, we found a spot and had a few hours sleep. Not uninterrupted sleep, but it was sleep none-the-less.
Our flight to Bangkok the next morning was fairly uneventful, we were lucky that our flight was very empty so Warren and I had a 3 seater to ourselves. This gave us a chance to stretch out abit and act like we were in Business Class and not sitting cramped in Economy!
We arrived in Bangkok, and made our way to the hotel by train... like a local :) I was finally out of an airport!!! I was so excited to be in a foreign country I could squeal. And on a few occasions I actually did!
When we got out at our station, I squealed again, but for a different reason. The place was so disgusting. And it smelt horrible! I was convinced we were in the slums of Bangkok. Our hotel was a few hundred metres from the station, so it was a quick walk with our suitcases to check in.
We stayed at the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, it is the tallest building in Thailand boasting 81 storeys. Warren and were on the 47th floor. We had a really big suite with an amazing view of the city below.
A quick shower and change of clothes and we were off to explore the city below. There was a night market just outside our hotel so we didnt have to walk very far to get some Bangkok vibes.
We spent the next two hours or so walking in and out of these small streets taking in the hustle and bustle of the night life.
There were hundreds of stalls selling everything from clothes to appliances to fresh fruit and veggies.
I tried some of the local cuisine which is prepared by a woman standing over a work area which is attached to her scooter. I ordered squid on a stick (well i think it was squid anyway) The texture was weird so it was fooling my mind into thinking it wasnt good, but it actually was. And it was soooo cheap, in our Rands it worked out to R6.33c
I didnt spend much money after that as we had a hectic day of shopping ahead of us. There are three malls in a 3km radius of our hotel. We planned on exploring them extensively!
A night in a real bed with real sheets and real pillows was all I could think about, so when we got in just after 12am it wasnt long until I was dreaming of the week ahead....
When I was in Perth Airport a few years back, I put my backpack on the seat next to me, and somehow managed to use that as a pillow/ leaning post, and actually managed to get some sleep. Plus, no one could steal my bag seeing as I was almost completely on top of it. Air travel is extremely unglamorous.
ReplyDelete