Flight to Thailand
Our flight with Tiger Airways, from Singapore to Bangkok, was taking off very early; so we had to wake up at 4:30 to pack and get the first city train, from the nearest station -from our couchsurfing host home- to the airport.
We didn’t check which terminal was ours, so we spent some time confused moving from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2, for finally discovering our flight departure was from the “Budget terminal”, where we arrived by a free bus from the second one.
Once there, and without any online check-in neither print paper reservation, we checked our luggage: one of our backpacks with the camping matresses we carry with.
Singapore urban transport takes from you 1 dollar deposit every time you buy a ticket, so when we arrived to the airport we got our 2 dollars back without too many hopes of being able to buy anything more than a few candies on the airport.
It was a great surprise to find a 7 Eleven inside the airport, the most popular mini-supermarket on Asia. It was incredible to check that prizes there were the same that in the cities, so because of that we could get a couple of cakes for breakfast.
No incidents during the flight, just soft shakes like in any other small plane, but nothing scary. The flight attendants were dressed quite funny but they were much nicer than on European Low Cost companies.
Passing the airport passport control took us longer time than the flight in self. Ilze checked on internet about her VISA and it was supposed to be for free, but in the end Latvian citizens need to apply for VISA in advance or to do the 15-days VISA on arrival. After doing a long queue on passport control we need to change to the slow line for getting her VISA.
This VISA trouble cost us 1100 baths, that with the airport exchange rates (there were not ATMs before passport control) was almost 30 US$. And worst part was this VISA was valid just for 15 days, instead of the 30-days free one I got with the Spanish passport. Next visit to Thailand will be applying in advance for the 2 months tourist VISA.
Actual exchange rate between euro and Thai baths: 1 euro is 41,2 Thai baths. If you try to get money from any ATM you will have to pay 150 baths tax, no matter how much money you withdraw and added to your own bank charges.
Two hours after we were picking up our luggage and heading to the Sky Train, which connects airport with city center for 45 baths/person. After that we took one of the many inexpensive city buses for going near the river (10 baths per person).
This way started our adventures on Thailand, wonderful country from where we will continue writing.
