Fun Flights @ Bangkok, Thailand

We started our day with one last ride to the rental place to drop off our bikes. Everything went smoothly. We got our security deposit back and booked a Grab to the airport. Before we knew it we were checking into our fancy Avani+ Riverside resort, one of the few places we booked in advance.

After making ourselves comfortable and taking a quick shower we set off on a mission to do laundry. Adam in particular was desperately low on laundry and did not want to stoop down to Helen’s recommendation to “turn his underwear inside out.” So we decided to walk to a nearby wash & fold.

We walked through narrow streets without a lot of tourists. We definitely got a few stares and a few enthusiastic shouts of “hellooo!” from school aged children. We eventually made it to what Google Maps said was the wash & fold, but couldn’t see anything resembling a commercial store front. Instead we were on a dead end road surrounded by residential apartments.

A lady peeling potatoes on her stoop saw us looking confused and pointed at a building. We spotted a sign the size of a sheet of paper above the doorway. So we walked up and peered in to see a middle aged man watching TV in a narrow, cluttered room. We waved to get his attention and he jumped up, rushing over to take our laundry; he even offered to drop it off at the hotel tomorrow. We exchanged a few Bahts. Then handed him 5 kilograms worth of dirty cloths.

We walked away hoping that we’d get the clothes back, unsure if we’d just been scammed, but that was tomorrow’s problem anyway. Today we eat. We hunted down some massaman curry from a nearby restaurant, then elected to take a break from tourism by going to see Wicked in IMAX. We even got a little taste of home with some USA imported popcorn:

The movie was great. It was nice to relax, but the relaxing wasn’t going to stop there. The next day, Adam scoured the internet for the best couples massage in Bangkok. Let us say, the massage was a heavenly. It was a 3 hour experience including a body scrub and a facial. We walked away from the massage feeling like new people with smooth skin and relaxed muscles. We ordered a Grab back to the hotel and our clean laundry was in the room waiting for us.

Unfortunately, Adam came down with a bit of a cold so the next day was spent hanging out at the hotel. But we made the best of it with some rooftop infinity pool time and Indian food delivery for dinner.

With Adam feeling a bit better, we dubbed our final full day in Bangkok the day of flights. We started our morning with a latte flight:

After our late breakfast we walked around Bangkok to check out some of the markets. After a lot of walking, some light shopping, and a couple train rides we found ourselves in Bangkok’s Chinatown, ready for our second flight: a tea flight. The tea leaves were brought in tiny ceramic teapots sitting atop a matching ceramic basin. The waitress poured hot water from a kettle into the teapot, closed the lid, and poured more water on the top of the teapot. Then left the kettle for us to refill the tea ourselves. This created the perfect sip of tea, one glass at a time. We loved the tiny teapots so much that we asked to buy one, but one teapot was going for 35,000 baht ($100), which was about 10 times more than we expected.

Getting a bit hungry we walked a couple blocks to a Chinese restaurant with a delicious noodle soup that cured the last lingering symptoms of Adam’s cold.

Fully fed, we finished the day with one final flight, a beer flight:

As we were walking back to the Avani, Helen asked Adam “remind me what time’s our flight tomorrow?”

“Let me check” he responded. Then opened his phone and searched for the confirmation email. To his amazement he couldn’t find the confirmation email. Realizing the irony that after our day of flights we were without a flight, Adam checked Google Flights as his panic levels approached takeoff. “Helen I have good news and bad news. Bad news is I never booked tomorrow’s Tokyo flight.” Helen’s eyes widened. “Good news is there are still open seats on the flight and it hasn’t gone up in price. So it’s like I never made a mistake to begin with.” Adam said, batting his eyes at Helen endearingly. She shook her head in disbelief, laughing as Adam filled out the checkout form for our flights 12 hours before take off.

The AirAsia website was a bit slow, but it eventually went through, we had a booking number and everything. Catastrophe averted. We went to sleep that night looking forward to exploring Tokyo.

When we woke up in the morning Adam went to check in for the flight. We had a booking number, but there was still no confirmation email. “Helen, I’m not sure if we have a flight and I can’t get a hold of AirAsia’s customer support.” Adam said, suspecting that the reservation never went through.

We quickly packed our bags and went to the airport early. After talking to customer support, we learned our payment never went through. In the end we bought our international tickets at the sales counter three hours before the flight.

“Hey, the tickets are still the same price. We didn’t lose any money.” Adam said, smirking at Helen.

She rolled her eyes. “From now on, I’m booking the plane tickets.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Adam agreed.