When I returned from
Penang on the Sunday evening there was no certainty about how long I could stay
in Bangkok. The first thing I did when I got to my room was to try to sort out
the shambles which was my onward flight to Hong Kong. I had miscalculated how
long I was going to stay in Penang and had left myself with just one day in
Bangkok whereas I wanted to spend the whole week there and leave on Friday. At
the time when I arrived in Bangkok I was scheduled to travel on to Hong Kong
the next morning! This was out of the question but if I just failed to show up
and book a separate flight to Hong Kong on Friday, my long flight back from
Hong Kong to Barcelona would have been wiped out by a soulless computer in
Dubai. I spent 40 minutes on the phone to Dubai at a cost of 100 euros. This
was doubly galling because I could have used the hotel phone and called Dubai
via a local call but I wasn’t sure whether I would end up speaking to Emirates
in Dubai or Bangkok.
Finally, finally, by
talking to someone in contracts department I managed to erase my flight the
following day (obviously without any compensation) and still retain my Hong
Kong to Barcelona sector which had really been worrying me. And the man in
Dubai had the cheek to say, “As a special concession”. Excuse me I am an
Emirates Business Class passenger with a Skywards loyalty card and you treat me
like this? So, I booked a new ticket for Friday, in Economy Class because it’s
only a 2 hour flight and the A380 is so big that economy in this plane is like
Business Class in many others. So, I lost a Bangkok-Honk Kong sector, lost 100
euros on a stupid phone call and paid 180 euros for a new ticket.
I went to bed greatly
relieved but fuming at how a passenger can be so casually dumped by an airline
whose name I see almost everywhere. Where is my graffiti spray can?
So this was a perfect time
for a beer and something to eat in the restaurant. Next day I used the hotel
wifi to check my email and to plan what to do with my stay. The first thing I
did was to look up Meetup groups in Bangkok, or to be precise to look up the
calendar for the week ahead. I saw two groups which were of interest; one was
arranging a walk to a temple then to have lunch so I joined them. And they had
a similar event later in the week so I went on that too. On the second walk we
visited The Artist’s House which is right next to one of the canals which was
very exciting with long-tailed boats whizzing past. If you’re not familiar with
these boats, they are driven by a truck engine at the rear with the propeller
on the end of what would have been the prop-shaft in a vehicle.
The group wanted to have
some food at 12 but I wasn’t hungry but I had seen a massage shop next to the
canal so I went back there. I found one of out group, a Thai lady, who had had
the same idea so we both had a Thai massage. Hey, no smirking this time! A
genuine Thai massage with lots of pulling and kneading. Anyway the two people
doing the massage were about my age! No young girls in slinky red dresses
(unfortunately).
The other Meetup group I
found was an art group and they had scheduled a life class for one evening and
I signed up to go along. I had all my art materials with me but only had rather
expensive watercolour paper which was rather wasted on quick sketching which is
what basically happens. I nearly put my foot in it at the start because the organiser
and model greeted me and they both looked slightly foreign so I asked where
they were from. “Middlesborough” one replied. Er, yes, sure! Anyway, I should
have recognised the very obvious English accent.
If you’re not familiar
with life class, it’s not really a class in the sense of a school but the
custom is for the model to be nude and for the artists to be given 5 minute, 10
minute and longer spells for sketching various poses. There were about 10 of us
there and the evening passed very pleasantly. The meeting was upstairs in a bar
and downstairs there was a fish and chips restaurant so you can guess what I
had for supper after the drawing! They even had wine and it was not too
expensive.
The hotel was perfectly
placed right opposite the National Stadium Skytrain station so I often used to
hop on the train, either to go to the Siam Shopping Mall just one stop away, to
the river or to the Meetup groups. It is all on pylons above ground so one gets
a wonderful view of the city. None of the buildings are very tall. There is
also a Metro but I never used that. I took the train once to the Chao Prao
River and took a boat trip up past the Royal Palace but I didn’t stop off
there, I visited it last time I was in Bangkok. I have to admit I spent quite a
lot of time in the shopping mall and another place which I liked was right next
door to the hotel, The National Art Centre. In fact, at the end of the week, by
chance I met the walking group organiser there while I was having a pendant
made. A small studio offered a do-it-yourself silver pendant using silver clay.
This is basically pure silver in a clay suspension so it can be formed into
whatever shape you like. Then it is cooked in an oven and the clay falls away
leaving the silver. The size is reduced by about 30%. I chose the logo that my
cousin Richard designed for my company many years ago and which I still use on
my website. It is rather like an arrow pointing into a circle. So I and my
young helper hacked away at this small piece of (what looked like) clay until I
got what I wanted and off she went to put it in the oven. My walking friend
said “he” – I corrected him. But then many young Asians can pass as male or
female and sometimes the only way you know if by what they are wearing. . I
bought a chain in Manila. The pendant doesn’t trigger security systems at
airports so it never leaves me.
The hotel had the most
impressive breakfast buffet, I must tell you about that because they seemed to
be catering for at least 3 or 4 different cultures. For us westerners, there
was a card on the table where we could order eggs and bacon “sunny-side up,
over-easy, scrambled?” Of course, cereals, fresh fruit. And food for Thai,
Chinese tastes and who knows what else. And it was a huge space.
Two days before leaving, I
booked the Ibis North Point in Hong Kong (from an Ibis Hotel using the Ibis
website and with my Ibis loyalty card). I entered my bank card details and
thought that was that. Half way through my final day, Thursday, an email arrived
which said that my card had been refused and could I use an alternative one
before 6pm otherwise my booking would be cancelled. Nice eh? But I was out all
day, missed the deadline and lost my booking. And because it was a promo for
advanced booking it was not possible to re-book. I wrote to them, the duty
manager at Ibis Siam wrote to them. To this day I never heard a dickie bird
from them. Hey some people have no manners. So with not much time to spare I
booked an alternative hotel in Kowloon. And the same thing happened but this
time I was on a plane to Hong Kong so I missed the deadline again, obviously
there is some kind of communication difficulty between Spanish banks and
whoever handles Visa in Hong Kong. But when it came to pay the Ibis Bangkok there
was no problem. By the time I arrived at the hotel in Hong Kong, the deadline
had passed and my booking had been cancelled and so I had to start again and
this time pay with my UK bank card. But this does seem rather unfair, to come
back up to 24 hours later having accepted the booking and the payment and to
say in effect, “sorry we’ve changed our mind”, and scrub the booking. And in
the case of Ibis, I was actually in an Ibis hotel when I made the booking!
But it is a similar story
to the one I received from Emirates when they gave me such a hard time. So many
people abuse the system that they have to put in safeguards to block them but
of course it hits the genuine traveller.
So on Friday morning, I
checked out of the Ibis Siam, toddled across the patio and into the Skytrain
station. 5 stops took me to the interchange for the airport express so that was
really easy. Of course, had I retained my Emirates Business Class seat, the
journey would have been by car as it was when I arrived. The train was probably
quicker! Next stop: HKG!
