48 hours in Bangkok and 40 hour to Singapore

Border crossing to Thailand
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We were very glad to have arrived back in Bangkok, we had been planning our time there allot over the last few days and we had a pretty good plan which included; eating, shopping and relaxing - right up our street!  We wanted to go back to the hostel we had stayed at last time we were in Bangkok but it was full so after a few failed attempts we found a suitable place just up the street.

We were halfway through our nice day in Bangkok when we decided to quickly check our emails.  You know when you open up your hotmail account it gives you a little news pages with some headlines and holiday tips before you click on the hotmail logo?  Well that page is the only reason we even found out about all the troubles in Bangkok.  We opened the page to read 'Bangkok airport closed' HUH?  Bangkok airport closed?  What is that about?  We read the article and found out that protesters opposing the current government and Prime Minister had taken over Suvarnabhumi International Airport.  We weren't really sure what to make of the situation at first. All of the flights for Wednesday (the day we found out) had been canceled and our flight wasn't until Thursday and we had no idea if situations would improve by then.  It was difficult to get any information about it, the best source of info was the BBC.  If you went to the airport website it didn't even mention the closure!

Movie theatre in Singapore airport
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We decided to wait and hear about our flight before we started making any decisions, we received a text from Air Asia at 1230am telling us that they had canceled our flight for the next morning.  We decided to go straight out to the internet cafes and try to get things sorted.  We phoned Qantas airlines and had to push our flights back by 3 days to give us enough time to get to Singapore.  We then had to rearrange our internal flight that we had already booked from Alice Springs to Cairns, and then call the campervan rental company and push back our booking with them.  It all went fairly smoothly and we didn't have too many problems rearranging things.  We also had to queue up at the air asia office the next day to get a refund for our canceled flight.  It should take up to 30 days to go back on!  Not sure why there is such a huge delay, probably so you forget about it and never try to chase it up.

Pond in Singapore airport
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Once we had rearranged all our travel we now had the small problem of how we were going to get to Singapore in 3 days.  No flights available so we decided to take the bus.  It should take 36 hours on the bus to get to Singapore, including 2 border crossings.  We paid 1400 baht each for our tickets which is not a bad price and we were scheduled to leave Bangkok at 6pm.  We knew things were off to a bad start when we were already 1 hour behind schedule and we hadn't even boarded the bus yet!  We took an overnight bus to Strung Tren and switched to another bus.  When we got to the travel place that was supposed to provide the 2nd bus they informed us that the border was backed up with 10 000 people and we would have to pay another 750 each to cross.  Ahhhhh we kind of suspected that something like this may happen - basically they lie and lie and lie until you cough up more money, and if you don't pay them they will happily leave you there all day because they don't give a shit about you.  We just paid and didn't put up too much of a fuss because there is nothing you can do.  It's so frustrating!

Obviously they were lying about the border being backed up, and we knew it, but we also knew we could be left in Strung Tren for days if we didn't pay.  The best is when you start to question anything that they are doing they just pretend that they no longer speak English and just say 'yes' to everything you ask them!

When we got to the border everything was fine, not backed up with 10 000 people, but we knew that already. and we crossed with no problems.  Right after we crossed into Malaysia our mini bus was pulled over by border police and they scanned the outside of the bus to see if we were bringing anything dodgy through.  They opened up the trunk to look at our bags but didn't actually go through them.  Crossing these borders always made us feel extremely edgy.  Of course we didn't have anything dodgy in our bags but you have no idea about your drivers and about the other passengers in the van.  And when you are on buses all the time your bag invariably ends up being out of your sight for long periods of time in the storage compartments and we always had a worry that someone could maybe take the opportunity to put something into your bag for you to take across the border.  Both Malaysia and Singapore carry a mandatory death penalty for smugglers so it is quite unnerving.  Our hearts were racing, but the whole check took about 2 minutes.  We were very happy driving away without any trouble.

We finally arrived in Butterworth in Malaysia and were once again supposed to be changing to another bus.  And...you guessed it, another 'fee' was added on at the bus station.  They were asking for another 25 ringgit per person (250 Baht)  no one was happy with the extra fee, and there was a Spanish guy in our group who was really mad and accused the tour operator of trying to cheat us (which he totally was)  The tour operator obviously found this quite offensive and slapped the Spanish guy across the face!  The Spanish guy said 'right - if you want to fight, lets fight' and threw his bag down and waited for the tour guy to come out.  They were pulled apart in the parking lot - so we actually never got to see anything good.  After sitting around this bus station for 6 hours our bus finally arrived.  When we got to Singapore they just dropped us at the border and we had to make our own way through on the other side.  It was fine for us because we'd been there before and knew how to work the public transport, we were just thrilled to have finally crossed into Singapore.  We had booked the same hostel we stayed in before, we ate great food and watched a wee movie and were so happy to be able to relax for a day!  The next day we went to Singapore's Changi airport as soon as we got up and managed to get an early check in with Qantas.  The check-in guy had to check out our Australian visas to make sure we could get the flight, and, of course, there was problems with my visa.  Basically the travel agent had accidentally put down that I was a UK citizen instead of a Canadian one.  The check-in guy needed to sort it, but he said it happens allot and he was able to get it sorted out for in about 20 minutes - thank goodness!  I was so looking forward to getting out of SE Asia at this point that the prospect staying even longer was not super appealing!

The bright side of the day was definitely the airport itself.  It was the nicest airport either of us had ever been to.  It had 3 huge terminals, 2 movie theaters, a coy pond, butterfly garden, music listening areas, t.v. areas, video games, loads of shops and restaurants, a skytrain, free internet, spas, beds, showers and hotels.  So if you can manage a stopover in this airport we highly recommend it!

so to sum everything up;

Singapore Changi airport = recommended

40 hour bus ride from Bangkok to Singapore = not recommended