Take a trip to Thailand (4) Itinerary and Transportation

Finally, I finish my midterm exam, which means that I have enough time to keep sharing my graduation trip to Thailand. Today, I will share the plan of my graduation.

We planned to stay six days in Thailand; most of time, we were in Bangkok since the transportation there is relatively convenient and there are also lots of tourist attractions to visit. The map pic bellow is the brief route of this trip. The blue dot is the airport we arrived at; it is Suvarnabhumi International Airport, which is also know as (New) Bangkok International Airport.

Day1: Suvarnabhumi International Airport → Pataya

First day, we went one of the most famous tourist attractions in Thailand, Pataya. Although it is quite far away from Suvarnabhumi International Airport, it is not difficult to go there. In fact, there is a shuttle bus from Suvarnabhumi International Airport to Pataya. You may wonder how my friends and I went to the hotel after taking of the shuttle bus.

Pataya is extremely beautiful.

Taxi

Since the hotel we lived is not reachable on foot, we took a taxi to there. Unfortunately, the taxi driver took us to a wrong place; therefore, we should have come up with another way to there.

Songthaew

Luckily, because of a large number of tourists in Pataya, there are many “Songthaews” (雙條車) to take. Songthaew is a kind of passenger vehicle; it is a truck with a sunshade and two benches on the back of the truck. Although taking Songthaew is a little bit dangerous, it is cheaper than a taxi, and it is also a great way to experience Thai culture. The drivers of Songthaew could easily notice that who are tourists; when they saw tourists, they slow down and honk as hint to ask whether tourist would like to take or not. If you want to take Songthaew, you could stop and the driver will ask where you want to go, and tell the price. This process is really important: bear in mind that you should have a bargain with the driver because normally, they require higher price. You don’t need to feel embarrassed, it is just their culture. If you still think the price is too high, you could just say no and opt for another one. There are so many Songthaews you could choose.

Day2: Pataya → Bangkok(CHERN Hostel) → Thai MacDonald → Asiatique The Riverfront (河濱碼頭夜市)

On the second day, my friend chartered a van to Bangkok in advance from a Taiwanese living in Bangkok.

(It is essential to make preparation to have a self-help abroad. To alleviate the loadings, each of us is responsible for different tasks, such as booking hotels, making the itinerary, researching the public transportation, etc. I am grateful to my friends; all of them did a good job. I also admire the friends responsible for researching public transportation, it is his first time going abroad, but he was familiar with the public transportation as a local. Thanks for his effort, we didn’t spent much time on thinking which bus we had to take.)

(Below is the link of bus route of Bangkok, it is useful if you want to make preparation to have a self-help trip to Bangkok 

http://www.transitbangkok.com/bangkok_buses.html)

Bus

At first, we planned to go to floating market, so we took the bus to the transform center to go to floating market. There are two kinds of bus in Bangkok, with air con or without air con. The bus without air con is for free. As for the bus with air con, like the Taiwanese bus in the past, there is a clerk charging the fee. You should told her which place you want to go, and she / he will tell you how much you have to pay and give you a ticket. Most of the passengers in the bus were locals, it is really a great chance to act as a local and gain insight of Thai culture.

bus ticket

Unfortunately, when we arrive at the transform center, we found we had to wait the next bus for a long time, and the floating market would be close when we arrived there. Consequently, we cancel the original plan and decided to go to Asiatique The Riverfront.

Next week, I will tell you how we went to Asiatique The Riverfront and keep sharing our plan and transportation in Thailand. If you want to know in detail or have any question about our trip, please leave a comment and I’ll try my best to answer you. Thanks for reading my blog!