Introduction
ANA Business Class Chicago to Tokyo
United Club – Tokyo Narita
Thai Airways Business Class Tokyo to Bangkok
One Night in Bangkok
Thai Airways Business Class Bangkok to Bali
D’Wina Villa Kuta and Exploring Bali (Part 1)
Exploring Bali (Part 2)
Exploring Bali (Part 3)
Ethiopian Airlines Bangkok to Addis Ababa
Ethiopian Airlines Cloud Nine Lounge and Addis Ababa to Seychelles
Hilton Seychelles Northolme Resort and Exploring the Seychelles (Part 1)
Exploring the Seychelles (Part 2)
Exploring the Seychelles (Part 3)
Ethiopian Airlines Seychelles to Addis Ababa and Back to the US

Due to a delay caused by a typhoon in Asia, we arrived in Bangkok about 3 hours late, at 1:00 am Monday night/Tuesday morning.  Bangkok’s airport had one detail that, although minor, I really appreciated.  On each of the signs directing you to Baggage Claim, other terminals, etc, there was an indication of how far away the labeled location is.  In one way, it might be a bit discouraging to see that Immigration is 800 meters away (half a mile!) but I’d rather know up front and not be trudging on for an unknown eternity.  At least with the sign, the eternity is known ahead of time!  But seriously, it’s nice to decide when to use the restroom, how long it will take you to get to your next gate, etc.  Once we made it the 800m to Immigration, there was only one other person ahead of us in line so we cleared within a few minutes.

Our layover was about 12 hours, which brings up an interesting tip.  On a domestic trip, connections/layovers can be a maximum of 4 hours long.  On an international trip, however, you can have a layover of up to 24 hour hours.  Since we scheduled to arrive in Bangkok in the evening (and there were no more flights to Bali that night), we had a 12 hour “layover,” which would ideally give us time to see the city.  Even if there was a flight to Bali that night, we could still schedule the flights for an overnight in Bangkok as long as our next flight departed within 24 hours of the time we landed.  I’ve used this many times to have a quick visit to a city that I might not otherwise see – I did 22 hours in Honolulu on the way back from Australia, and 18 hours in Frankfurt on the way back from Greece.  It’s a great way to explore several parts of the world all in one trip.

In any event, we were scheduled to land at 9:55 pm, and had planned to head into Bangkok for a little while.  Unfortunately, with the delay, it would have been a pain to make it into the city easily, so we figured we’d just walk around our hotel.  There are TONS of hotels near the Bangkok airport, and as with most things in Thailand, they’re crazy cheap.  You can get an average 2 star hotel for about $17/night, or a 4 star hotel for $65/night.  We booked the Mariya Boutique Hotel, which included a complimentary airport transfer.  We unfortunately did have to wait about 15 minutes (I think they were waiting on another passenger to arrive, but eventually they told us they were ready and took us in a very comfortable van to the hotel, which took less than 10 minutes.  Check in was prompt and efficient, and we were given a key to room 309.

Once we dropped off our luggage in the room (we only had our carry-on bags, since this was just a long layover, our checked bags remained at the airport and would be transferred to our connecting flight in the morning), we headed back downstairs to get a little taste of the area.  We walked down the sidewalk a little, and came across lots of open-air restaurants and pubs, which were all pretty lively for 1:30 am on a Monday night.  We wandered into one place with live music, and we definitely stuck out like a sore thumb:

There were lots of statues and miniature temples at the entrances to stores and restaurants:

After wandering around for a bit, it was after 2 am, so we headed back to our hotel.  Even though we didn’t get a chance to see the major sites in Bangkok, we were glad to at least get a taste of the culture.

The next morning, we had a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby, which was a relatively large buffet with a variety of options….bread, jam, eggs, rice, noodles, fruit, sausage, etc.  We both ended up with a rather interesting-looking breakfast:

We finished breakfast right at 7:00 am, when we had scheduled the shuttle to take us back to the airport.  The shuttle driver was ready, and we headed out on time for our 9:10 am departure to Bali.

Continue to Part 6: Thai Airways Business Class Bangkok to Bali