I have heard of horror stories of travelers missing their flights due to the immigration officer, I understand it is part of their job. And so whenever we travel, I try to go via Mactan, but this time, we have to travel to Bangkok with a connecting flight in Manila. For the fourth time, we joined the Arcanys Five-Year Club international travel incentive offered by my husband's company. For the context, here are the Arcanys Five-Year Club trips:
2018: Taipei
2019: Malaysia ( we skipped because I got pregnant)
2020: Pandemic (no travel)
2021: Pandemic (no travel)
2022: Singapore
2023: Hong Kong
2024: Bangkok, Thailand
2025: Saigon, Vietnam (Coming this October)
My husband has been with Arcanys for 12 years now, and so we had only missed one travel incentive during my pregnancy.
For the year 2024 Bangkok trip, we traveled with my senior citizen parents and my sister in law, niece, and nephew. We stopped by NAIA to meet our other companions who were from Polomolok. We flew via Cebu Pacific and we even won a prize for their quick onboard games!
Our trip was at night around 11 PM, if my memory serves me right, so we had time to have dinner and then wait until we could get past immigration.
Normally, when we travel for this incentive, we go via Cebu as a group with other Arcanytes or my husband's colleagues, the officer will not ask questions; they'd stamp and let us go. But this time is different. We are in NAIA and we didn't have any other Arcanytes with us, although we have all documents available to show them, it was still nerve-wrecking.
As we were traveling as a family, we were given a different lane and we went to this window where the officer was a man around mid-40s and as he looked at my husband's passport, he asked Where's his hometown. My husband answered Oslob, and he then pointed to his name tag, and I was surprised! It's a relative! My husband was happy to know that we were assigned to someone who didn't give us a hard time, but it was like a reunion instead!
And so, we passed immigration swiftly and happily!
We boarded the plane at 11:51 PM and reached Bangkok three hours later. It was early morning, so we decided to go to our hotel with Grabcar.
We reached the Berkeley Hotel Pratunam at 5:30 AM, rested, had breakfast at seven, as we had a tour to catch up at 9 AM. We did a quick stroll around the hotel as well to see what the locals do in the morning. I took a few snaps too with my mobile phone:
Our call time was at 9:00 AM, but the bus arrived later than that. Our first stop was at Ancient City. I will write a more in-depth blog about that, but we stayed on the bus while touring around.
Ancient City is huge! Super huge that walking is not recommended unless you have the entire day! We only had two hours to stay here, as we needed to move to another location, which is a bummer, as I had expected to stop by each of the highlighted areas of this tourist spot.
Then we headed towards the Erawan Museum. This is famous because of the three-headed elephant and it being pink, which is visible even on our way to the location.
We only had a quick visit here as well; there wasn't much to do, in fact. We saw the delicate arts, and my favorite is the ceiling. It was mesmerizing. Outside, we also explored the garden.
After this, we went to a local floating restaurant. Thailand is quite famous for floating restaurants and neighborhoods. We even went to one of the touristy ones on our third day, but for today, our itinerary includes a visit here for snacks or a meal, as we haven't eaten lunch yet due to the hectic tour schedule.
It was not hard looking for something that Matti would like, as there were several fried options. We tried this meal with chicken, eggs, and pasta, and we liked it. I forgot what it's called, though.
The only problem was the communication between us and the locals. They speak little English, so we had to use hand signals, gestures, and lots of pointing at photos.
Additionally, we learned a few Thai words from our tour guide, which we were able to apply, although they still had a hard time understanding us.
As we were about to go, we found something interesting - coconut coffee! It was my first time hearing about it. I just wanted to try, so I ordered one. Lots of Arcanytes were surrounding this cute small shop run by an elderly couple.
I love watching her make the coconut coffee! She got loads of orders and we were all willing to wait!
After quite some time, which I didn't mind as it was fun watching her make the coffee, she handed me my coconut coffee!
Made with pure coconut water, and mind you, Thailand has the sweetest coconut water! I was truly surprised, as all the coconuts that I sipped during our entire stay in Bangkok were all sweet and good! Then, freshly brewed coffee topped with coconut meat! She didn't add any sugar, and the coffee was so good!
We headed back to the hotel and arrived at seven in the evening. It was already dark, and we were tired from the entire day tour, so we didn't bother going down; instead, we ordered dinner from the hotel's in-room service.
We got pizza, fries, and the signature sticky rice with yummy cream sauce paired with ripe mango! I got full and slept to regain strength for the next day adventure!
Thanks for reading! Here's a video to summarize our first day in Bangkok!
J U N E B R I D E
Boholana | Cebu | Philippines | Travel | Photography Enthusiast | Calligraphy | Art
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