Bangkok.... Here I Come !!!!

Hello Friends,

Presenting to you my life’s most amazing and adventurous expedition, the Thunderous Thailand. The land of beautiful beaches, islands, culture & people, so below I am penning down my own experience of being in this exquisite country.

As you might be aware I belong to Bangalore, India and my backpacking travel was limited to the Indian terrain till now which primarily included exploring nature, hiking various peaks which you guys might have come across in my previous blogs resulting in me getting addicted to backpacking now. But never travelled abroad and here is what I was planning for, an abroad backpacking experience all alone.

Many people don’t have an idea about what actually backpacking is? So in simple words, it’s just like traveling with your bag always on your back. It’s a less comfort travel as you never dump your bag and belongings in a hotel or any guesthouse. You use the hotels and the guest houses only to freshen up and may be to get some sleep, and then travel all around the place not knowing when and where you land up after a day of travel.

Advantages of backpacking, you’ll get familiar with the places, people & their culture, make many friends who are backpacking as well, and interacting with them will get you an idea of the country side. Important thing is that you will explore the country in the least cost, unlike the regular package tours, where you been taken to few tourists spots and that’s all, you have seen the country. But you don’t even know how to reach that particular tourist spot, not that backpacking has only the pros, it has cons as well, like you will face challenges in each and every stages. Understanding the local languages, way to commute to different parts of the place, getting proper food, getting lost and above all its entirely different country you will have many safety issues of getting robbed/cheated. But you need to overcome these cons to explore a country. I see many Europe and US nationals adopt backpacking whereas I hardly see that in India though; but believe me, this is the best way to see and understand a Country/Place you are visiting.

Places Covered: Bangkok, Ko Tao (Island) & Phathaya (Pattaya)

Duration: 5 Days 4 Nights

My plans started with surfing a few blogs online and after a fair web research I targeted these 3 places. My primary intensions were to go for scuba diving and bungee jumping in Thailand and that’s how I zeroed to Ko tao for dive. Believe me, I found this island after ample amount of efforts (most cheapest and beautiful island in Thailand) and Phathaya (Pattaya) for bungee jumping. The first step I took was to book my air ticket which gets expensive with time. The cheapest way to travel from Bangalore is to catch a bus to Chennai and travel through Air Asia which departs at 10:30 PM IST and lands in Bangkok by 3:45AM Local Thai Time. After booking my tickets (to & fro), I was browsing for my stay in these three places. I went through loads of Google search  to find the least expensive stay and that’s when I found a website named HostelBookers.com wherein you’ll find plenty of hostels, guest houses. My primary reason to choose this site was that they don’t charge you any additional service fee. I booked the lowest and best Hostels around these places and my next challenge was to travel to Ko Tao (Island). Same efforts put to find a travel service Lomprayah.com, which has bus and ferry services to many islands from Bangkok. So now my plan was fixed and same is referred below, and there were some last minute plan changes as well, as it was quite challenging to manage the limited time I had.

Day 1

Reach Bangkok (3:30AM) – Explore Bangkok for a day and my bus was booked on the same evening @ 9:00 PM to Ko Tao island.

Day 2

Reach Ko Tao By 8:30 AM, go for scuba and spend the night in island.

Day 3

Depart from Ko Tao, reach Bangkok and explore Bangkok’s night life.

Day 4

Travel to Phathaya (Pattaya), try bungee jumping and explore Phathaya (Pattaya) nightlife.

Day 5

Explore and Shop in Phathaya (Pattaya) and depart to Bangkok to catch the return Flight to Chennai (India).

So here I was, with all the plans and actions in place waiting to begin the journey of a lifetime. BANGKOK... !!! Here I come :)