We were up nice and early at 5.20am this morning! Not seen this time in a while and can't say I was thrilled about it! The taxi came to collect us at 6am and we were waved off on our way by the two owners with a packed lunch in hand! It didn't take long to get to the airport so we were there with loads of time to spare. It took no time to be checked in and after we sat and ate our packed lunch of bread with laughing cow cheese. Wasn't bad at all. Going through customs was easy too and once through to the other side we had a Burger King- at 7.30 in the morning!! Not the best breakfast for us!
I was still feeling unwell again today. I really hope I feel back to normal soon. I keep getting a bit bunged up too and my throat hurts so we stocked up on throat sweets!
The gate for the plane kept changing when it was near time to board so we kept walking up and down the airport. We saw a family from the plane get really panicked and started running around to find the gate, even though the plane wasn't even ready to board yet. It was a really small plane compared with others we have been on and it had loads of seats spare. It is the smallest plane we have been before- not tiny like, just smaller than usual. The plane journey was pretty rocky taking off and landing because of the fog and clouds. At one point it was pretty scary, but a little funny too! Not sure Nath saw the funny side though! The flight was only 1 hour 55 mins so we were back down and landing in Bangkok in no time. We hadn't been to this airport (Don Mueang) yet as we first landed and flew back out from Suvarnabhumi, which is the main one. This was pretty big too and had it's own train station.
When we got off the plane we saw a sign for visa on arrival and we presumed that we would have to get that as we didn't have our visa yet. We filled in a form and got everything ready, slightly confused but didn't know what else to do! The sign said it 1,000 baht each which we was not expecting and would nearly be the money gone that we had on us! We went to go to the counter to apply for it and a man approached us who worked there and explained in broken English that we didn't need to apply for one as we were just visiting. He had a good giggle at our expense!
We got our passports stamped at passport control with our arrival card stapled in, just like the last time. We did wonder why it was any different this time but I kept coming up with random reasons like the size of the plane and cost of the ticket! Well even though we didn't understand, we didn't have to pay our visas so that was good!
We had some food at the airport before getting on the public bus to Mo Chit 2 bus station. The bus was only 30 baht each and only took 20 minutes. We are getting pretty good at getting around without having a clue to be honest! We got to the bus station at 1pm and picked up our tickets for the overnight bus to Chiang Mai. We didn't set off until 11pm and there was nothing close by so we had a seriously lot of time to kill at the bus station! What a drag!! It was a big bus station and it was always busy and had a 7/11 to get warm drinks from so that was a bonus. The long wait did not help our exhaustion though!! 10 hours in the same spot in the same station. We did it though, eventually! Then we had to get on a coach overnight and try sleep. This wasn't one with beds either, just normal seats but to be fair the bus was nice and the seats reclined far back. We both got some sleep too, more than we expected so it was a good trip really.