Archive for the ‘travelogue’ tag
The days in Pattaya… Part I
The Bangkok International airport was awesome. The peculiar design of the horizontal stretch and the 3 floors, with all the glass structures, makes it absolutely stunning. Maybe there would be more beautiful airports, but this was the first most beautiful I ever saw. After getting stamped the on-arrival visa, which cost 1000 Baht (1 Baht = 1.5 INR) , and exchanging some rupees to Baht from the exchange counter, we moved out of the airport, where the Thai guide, Mr. Bas, was waiting for us with our bus.
Two days were allocated in Pattaya, to where we were heading. It was around 2 – 2.5 hr journey from Bangkok airport to Pattaya. The highway was absolutely the highway, with long stretches, with only the tolls in between and just green land on the sideways for a very long time. Read the rest of this entry »
Colombo Travelogue
It was my first international trip. I had been to internal flights, but not the international. And hence there was no hassle of form-filling or the visa and all. And when you have the company of your loving mom with her friends circle, its kinda bit of feeling odd man out, being the youngest among the lot. But who cared. I was going on my first world tour!
The Srilankan Airlines, were not that good as I expected, but considering the low prices, it did meet the requirements. The flight to Colombo, Srilanka, was in the early morning on Saturday, 15th November 2008. The mini TV behind the seats of international flights was a new thing to me, but before I could search for the movies or any other shows, we had almost reached the Bandaranaike International Airport, Colombo, as it was just a half-one hour journey. There was no breakfast in the flight, and me and mom thanked ourselves that we did had few dosas in the morning which served as the mini-breakfast.The airport was pretty good. It was the first international airport outside India I landed.
It was a start with trouble. The guide who was supposed to pick up at airport did not turn up. We wasted bit of time there and eventually reached to the allocated hotel, with the help of airport travel authorities. The airport had a sight seeing facility of Colombo, with a charge of USD $10 per person. And to realize that we were charged by the travel agents $15 per person!! Read the rest of this entry »