Visa extension - Cambodia borderrun

During January we realized that we are already in Thailand for 5 months and it was almost time for our border run. So we booked our seat on the van with the same company that we did our visa run with.

The border run is a one day trip and you go to the Cambodian border. You leave from Tesco lotus next to the On Nut BTS station at 7 in the morning and return at about 16:00. Here is how our trip went down:

I was very excited since I got an off day from school and got to go to a new country and add another stamp in my passport. We got up very early the morning, packed a backpack full of snacks (‘n trip is nie ‘n trip sonder padkos nie…) and went down to the road to get a taxi. We missed all the traffic since it was about  5:30 in the morning and arrived VERY early at TESCO. Luckily there is a 24h McDonalds so we each grabbed a cup of WAKE-ME-UP coffee.

At 7 the van arrived and all the people had to wait for me – there is certain stuff that needs to happen in the morning okay… And my system does not care if I am on a tight time schedule. So I hopped into the van – Steven saved us nice seats in the front just behind the driver. These are the best seats since you have loads of leg space and the hopping around like popcorn in a tin can is minimized.

After about 3 hours of death-defying stunt driving done by our driver, we stopped at a random fuel station in the middle of no-where to fill up and smoke:

Then we were exposed to some more crazy Thai van driving and eventually ended up at the Cambodian border. The Cambodian border looks like a bad mix between Mexico, Zimbabwe and the Sun…

 It is quite an easy process to do the whole stamp thing. You queue to get your Thai visa cancelled, then walk over the bridge into Cambodia, hand your passport to a strange person together with 1800 baht, stress for about 2 hours, get your  passport back with a stamped Cambodian Visa, walk over the bridge, Thai visa stamped, DONE.

At the Cambodian side you wait at a place that they call a casino – it looks more like a Garage party gone wrong somewhere in the east of JHB – smoke hanging in the air, bad music playing, bottles of alcohol standing around and people that had too much exposure to sunlight hanging around. We opted to rather wait outside and see what we can buy at the duty free shops. And our efforts paid off when we saw that you can buy Marlboro for only 120 Baht a carton (R30 vir ‘n HELE doos sigarette). BARGAIN!! Until you smoke it and you realize that you just bought something filled with grass and a few donkie drolle of iets. It tasted horrible – and we had two cartons!!!

Anyhow we got our passports back, hopped in the van and started the insane journey back home. Nothing like a bit of Kamakazi style van driving to round off a trip to the barren land and back. 

Bangkok rooftop party at The Imperial Queens park (Part 2) Altitude party

So yet again I ate myself till I could barely walk (You know that feeling where you ATE SOOOO MUCH (!!!!) that you don’t want to walk, don’t want to sleep and don’t want to sit down?). And still we had this amazing Altitude rooftop party ahead of us – and apparently this had to be done feeling like a stuffed pig over Christmas. Well after waiting an hour for the Altitude party, we went to the swimming pool and relaxed for half an hour and went up back to our 5 star room at The Imperial Queens park hotel.  We spent 5minute to make sure that we look like rock stars (with our genes we did not need more time to achieve this).

And then exhilaration kicked in!!! We want to party on the rooftop of The Imperial Queens park hotel – Altitude party!!! You could hear the music of the party all the way to our room. (I wondered by my elf “Self, how will people react tonight at 12:30 when the music still played as loud...”)

 Sooooo the time finally came to head up to the Altitude rooftop party!!! Do you know how weird it feels if you sit in an airplane and its ready for blast off? Now that’s exactly what the elevator felt like. The moving speed of the elevator is remarkable. After taking 10 seconds from the 10^th floor up to the 32^nd floor your exuberance reaches peak levels - you just want to go party. When we got there we saw there were a lot of people…. (NO. Not a bunch of fellow party animals…) The employees of  The Imperial Queens park hotel… We were the only 2 (party) people there… now that feels strange (awkward moment) …. So I said to Brian that this really feels awkward… so yet again we decided to go to our room for 30 minutes or so, to let the party start. So after waiting again for 7 hours (and drinking some rum with Red Bull) we finally headed back to the Altitude party.

And we found a scene closer to what we expected…. More people. So we had to get something to drink because this is going to be a big night. (Our first rooftop party in Thailand and our first New Year’s party outside the borders of South Africa)  We were on a tight budget as we only had 2500 baht and this had to last us for the whole night. So we first had to go buy coupons. After buying the coupons (125 baht a coupon our eyes stretched and our mouths went “ f!@#$% this is expensive….”) Anyhow, we went to the bartender to buy ourselves a really expensive drink… 300 baht for a beer (even in rand this translated to be expensive R75 a beer), apparently we were going to do the countdown sober tonight…

So after paying 600 baht for 2 beers we finally got in the party mode…. Music playing as loud as a sound competition in Boksburg… we enjoyed ourselves.

 Here are some pictures:

We saw some coupons (about 1000 baht worth of coupons) and there were about 500 people so we could not return it to the owner thus we decided to randomly shout “thank you” into the crowd and buy us a celebrating drink. Cheers to us!!!

And the countdown finally started!!! :

And The Imperial Queens park hotel surprised us with amazing fireworks at the Altitude party:

After an amazing show of shooting stars and exploding umbrellas we danced for hours -untill my head started to make his own music in my body... DOOOF!!!#$% DOOF!@#$% BANG!@#$BANG!!!!!! I said to Brian “I’m done now”, so we decided to head back to our room. Brian went in search to find me some headache pills. While Brian went out I fell asleep. After half an hour Brian retuned with some pills. He woke me up and told me to drink!!! You know that feeling (you are sick nobody must touch, speak or look at you) that was how I felt. Then we finally went to bed. The next morning we had an amazing brunch at The Imperial Queens park hotel.

More pictures:

And after brunch we returned to face life as normal (not rock-star) people.

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Bangkok rooftop party at The Imperial Queens park Hotel (Part 1)

The week before we went to Hua Hin we decorated our apartment with lights – note the only apartment in the block with Christmas lights.

And being all fired up for the festive season we had a whole week of giving gifts to each other. With Christmas gone we had to decide what we would do for New Year’s Eve.  There are so many options for what to do over New Year’s that there is simply not enough New Year’s eves to do all the things. Two options that we entertained were either a beach party on Koh Samet or an outrages Bangkok rooftop party. We did our research and eventually came across an awesome package that has been put together by The Imperial Queens Park in Bangkok. It was a package that consisted of a rooftop party in Bangkok, a 5 star room for two people, buffet style dinner and a recovery brunch next to the pool the next day.

This is how our rooftop New Year’s party weekend in Bangkok went down:

Sunday morning we left our apartment at 7:30 as we heard that the Ferry is running between Minburi and Bangkapi mall (we would then take a taxi from the mall to the hotel). We arrived at the Ferry just to find out that the Ferry only operates during the week.

So with a bag full of beer and a bottle of rum, some cokes and a headache tablet or two we walked back up to the main road to get a bus to Bangkapi mall. (From Minburi you can take bus 27). We waited about 10 minutes before the bus came past and we jumped on (we wanted to be as early as possible at the hotel – we have to get value for our money you know…). The bus was crammed with people and the bus driver was obviously late for his own funeral by the way that he drove. The one moment I was standing in the bus minding my own business and looking at the pretty trees and the next moment I sat in the lap of a toothless Thai person that smells of yesterdays’ old fish… So Steven and I decided it was a better idea to sit on the box thing in the front of the bus – this way we will at least have our legs intact for the dancing we intended to do that night. After a crazy bus trip that somewhat felt like an amusement park ride that went public we eventually arrived at The Mall Bangkapi – one destination closer to our Bangkok rooftop party.

At the mall we hailed a taxi and in a million different tones and accents gave him the address that was printed on our ticket. After about an hour (15 minutes) we arrived at The Imperial Queens park hotel in Bangkok. It is a massive 5 star luxury hotel with 30 something floors and two rooftop pools. The hotel:

 

 We went to check in and the friendly staff informed us that we can check in at 12:00. So we left our luggage at the doorman and went for breakfast at a very cool place in a side street that reminds one of a holiday village.

 After breakfast we had a stroll through the city and had some fun in a monstrous mall. 

Then we headed back to the hotel and checked into our room. The room:

 After playing with all the gadgets in the room (please note the phone on the toilet – WHO ORDERS ROOM SERVICE FROM THE LAVATORY??!!) we headed down to the pool where we lay on the sunbeds and ordered drinks like royalty:

 

 We went back and took a well-deserved nap before went down for a scrumptious buffet style dinner with the best food you ever had in your life:

In our next blog Steven will tell you about the rooftop party on The Imperial Queens park and the recovery brunch.