Bangkok Day 4: Back to Changi

Day 4, which means, last day! Pardon me if there's not much to write about, it's all revisited stuff!

Did the preliminary packing, so that whatever we buy later, we just stuff it in. Early check out, and we dumped our stuff at the lobby of the hotel.



Ambled around Pratunam area again, and it's early so many shops are still closed.





Pratunam Market.

Found this wholesaler in Pratunam Centre ground floor that sells 2 tees for 300 baht. They're quite good quality, so I bought 2, for gifts.

Headed to Central World Plaza for lunch.





KFC isn't too cheap, and the servings are smallish, which was pretty disappointing. Instead of coleslaw they have tuna salad, and the cheese balls rocked.

Ambled arund the shopping malls, all lazy and tired, then it's time to taxi to the airport. We booked the taxi via the hotel, which cost a flat 400 baht. Decided to head out at 3.30pm in order to avoid Bangkok's famous jams.



Reached there too early! It's not even 4pm and the flight's at 7.40pm. Played with my DS. Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass is turning out to be pretty fun, love it!



Bored, sleepy.



The walk to the gate is horrendous. There aren't any travelators towards the gates, and we got gate D8, which meant walking across from D2 to D7 with our hand-carry luggage, for what seemed like a whole kilometre. They prolly assign these faraway gates to low-cost carriers. Hey at least Air Asia and Tiger Airways don't even have aerobridges linking the airport and the plane directly.



The plane arrived late. So the flight is delayed to 7.55pm. Supposedly, this is quite common for budget airlines.



A pretty rough flight. The pilot probably flew through the clouds rather than around them. Fitful sleep while QY played with his PSP beside me. Kept on waking up whenever the plane entered some clouds and dipped, shook, then pitched up.

Observation by QY and me: Caucasian pilots tend to take off from a rolling start right after taxiing, rather than from a full stop. And they don't hit the seatbelt lights at every little jolt of the plane.

It must have been pretty good tailwinds and clear runways, as we touched down ahead of schedule at 11.05pm despite departing late!

I don't know if the cabin is pressurised lower than the widebody jets I'm used to, or that the descent was fast or that whatever the ear-nose-throat surgeon who taught my class said about lower-cost airlines is true, but my ear hurt pretty badly and got blocked pretty bad after the descent.

But that's not going to stop me from saving a shitload of money in future by flying on a budget airline instead of paying exorbitantly for unnecessary frills.

After having our necks strained by the pilot's very enthusiastic use of reverse thrust, we rushed to clear the customs, got our duty-free liquor (Wolf Blass chardonnay and Hoegaaden beer for me). We parted ways after the fun-filled trip and I rushed to the taxi to avoid the midnight surcharge.

The stuff I bought back!

Food:


Some of the clothing:


And the notebook sleeve and the DS lite screen protector. (No picture.)

Ear remained painful and blocked for a few hours, before it slowly cleared up.

Price breakdown:
Air ticket: $214
Travel insurance: $17
Hotel stay: $70
Spending money: $230

Excluding the taxi rides and the duty free liquor, it's all done within $550. Yay for budget travel!