We arrived in Bangkok last night to 30°C temperatures and very clean air compared to most big of the big Indian cities. Not saying the air is perfect, but you can’t taste it and our lungs weren’t getting clogged up, so that’s saying something for the air quality in Bangkok.
We splurged and upgraded to Business Class for our short four-hour flight from Delhi to Bangkok.
For this flight, we cashed in some of our Aeroplan points, I believe it was a total of only 5,000 points, which cost a total of about $16.50 CAD in fees and taxes, so the upgrade cost was extremely minimal. A good deal!
When we arrived, we didn’t have our proverbial shit completely together. We hadn’t applied for our Myanmar eVisa yet and hadn’t looked after some, shall we say, critical details needed for the visa application.
We gave ourselves until Wednesday to get the visa approval—typically three business days—so we booked a flight to Mandalay for Thursday the 22nd.
We applied for the visas today at 11:10 a.m. Three business days would take us to next Wednesday if the Myanmar bureaucracy was efficient, so best to be safe. There were no flights to Mandalay on Wednesday.
Three hours later, “you’ve got mail.” Visas approved! That’s great and okay because we thought we had to wait and were therefore going to spend a little time on a nice nearby beach somewhere for a few days, so no big deal.
When we landed in Bangkok, we both noticed a very large number of Chinese all throughout the arrivals area. Thailand must be popular with the Chinese, we thought. Yes, it is popular with the Chinese, we were told—to the tune of millions of visitors right now (well, many thousands anyway)—because it is frigging Chinese New Year!
A nice little beach somewhere close? Not so easy to find now.
Gun Ho Fat Choi!(?)🎉🐲🏮⛩🐕 Happy New Year in Chinese, I think, and you’ll find a beach🏝 for some R and R…my very dear and very resourceful, clever friends!👍😘❤️ xo