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The reason for my being in Thailand principally was to sort out a number of affairs, both financial and personal and to give my Thai wife, Aom an opportunity to catch up with her family and for both of us to meet up with old friends.
The personal bit is to finalise changing my wife's name to her married one which is, to say the least, a lengthy, tedious and bureaucratic process. Half of this process has to be done in UK before travelling to Thailand.
Once our 28 month old son, Jack, is fully re-accustomed to his Thai grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins it's possible he will be left in their very safe custody whilst we chill out and do a bit of country roaming. We intend taking him on a couple of 'holidays' but when we visit friends in places like Pattaya he's best left in a place of safety; Pattaya is not a suitable place to take young children in my view, but I'm rewarding Aom, and myself a couple of visits and holidays at various places throughout Thailand.
To anyone who has stumbled across my original blog pages they will note that the occasional photo may be repeated on these pages. This is purely because at times we have visited the same places again and I've seen fit to make use of some of the photos and movies again.
For anyone interested, the original 3-month visit in 2013 around Thailand can be viewed here:-
TonyT's 1st 3-month Thailand Blog, 2013
Additionally, there are blogs when we returned to Thailand in February and September 2015, 2017 and 2018. These can be found via the links here:-
TonyT's 2nd Thailand Blog, early 2015
TonyT's 3rd Thailand Blog, late 2015
TonyT's 4th Thailand Blog, 2017
TonyT's 5th Thailand Blog, 2018
TonyT's 6th Thailand Blog, 2022
TonyT's 7th Thailand Blog, 2024
TonyT's 8th Thailand Blog, 2025
Our mixed itinerary on this trip was thus: Manchester, UK to Abu Dhabi flight 7+hrs; courtesy Etihad Airways. Abu Dhabi Airport 140 minutes for transfer Abu Dhabi to Bangkok flight 6+ hrs. Bangkok stay: 4 days. Bangkok to Phanom Dong Rak, Surin Province courtesy of Thawon our driver we've used before. (>6hrs). Phanom Dong Rak in Surin: 11 days Overnight bus Phanom Dong Rak to Bangkok, 6hrs 30mins. Two night stay in Bangkok. Early morning flight; Don Muang Airport to Chumphon Airport, 1hr 20mins. Mini-bus to Thung Makham Noi Pier, 1 hour. High speed Catamaran ferry to Koh Tao, 2hrs 15mins. Pick-up truk shuttle to Chintakiri Resort, Koh Tao. 7 days on Koh Tao followed by return Catamaran to Thung Makham Noi Pier, Chumphon. Return flight c/o Nok Air, Chumphon to Don Muang Airport, Bangkok Overnight stay in Bangkok. Taxi back to Don Muang Airport; Air Asia flight to Chiang Mai Airport. 5 night stay in Chiang Mai. Return flight Chiang Mai to Don Muang, 1hr 15mins. Taxi, Bangkok to Phanom Dong Rak, 5hrs 35mins. 6 days in Phanom Dong Rak, with day trips to various places. Personal taxi from Phanom Dong Rak to Bangkok for 3 nights. Return flight to UK
The priority task in the early days of this visit is to finalise the tedious process of changing my wife's I.D. and passport to reflect her married name. If this topic is of interest to anyone reading this blog the full details of the process is detailed on this page.
Monday February 27th, 2017:
Tuesday 28th: TOP FOUR & PANORAMA: Various photos of our apartment block and the views out of the bedroom window. BOTOOM TWO: A couple of Bangkok city street scenes.
Wednesday 1st March: TOP LEFT: Early drinks in a Soi 8 bar. TOP RIGHT: Later drinks in Soi Cowboy. BOTTOM: Even later drinks in Soi 4 showing typical 2am street scene.
Saturday 4th:
Anyway, here’s the journal/blog:-
14:00. Check-in at Manchester Airport. Fast tracked through security check and onto the Etihad Lounge for some relaxants, courtesy Etihad Airways.
Flight left on time and arrived at Abu Dhabi early morning. Only two hour wait for the next leg to Bangkok and after a further 5+ hours arrived around 18:00.BANGKOK
Through the usual Thailand Immigration.
Got a taxi in record time but that was the good news. The traffic entering the city was absolutely horrendous. Good job the cabs have A/C.
Really really glad to get into our apartment at Nana and chill out.
My mother-in-law arrived with one of my wife's friends, Kik, who wanted us to go out on the town. Neither of us were quite up to a session after 16 hours travelling. In the event, Aom and I popped out for a swift beer (which ended up 3) and the back to the apartment to rescue Aom's mother from our young son, Jack.
Up and about a little later than I intended to start the day but my jet-lagged brain wasn't functioning 100% yet. Down to a quick breakfast then it was a case of checking and getting the paperwork sorted before getting a taxi to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the far side of the city, 18kms away. Paid the driver extra to use the pay motorway as congestion in parts of Bangkok were gridlocked because of a closed bridge somewhere.
The reason for our being there was as described in detail above; to do the next stage of Aom's name to her married name. This bureaucratic bit of necessity didn't go too badly and resulted in the paperwork being processed in under an hour. The documents will be posted out to our home address in Surin. These will then allow us to move on to the penultimate stage which is getting a new Thai I.D. card. Final stage involves a trip back to Bangkok to get her new passport... phew!!
Later in the afternoon we walked across to Soi 8 for foot massages; we've used this place a lot in past years.
Late evening spent down around Nana Plaza enjoying several beers. Much later on we were joined by Aom's friend, Kik. After more drinks we all trooped back to the apartment where I left the two girls to it and stayed back whilst they beetled off out again to a night club; a girlie night.
Thursday 2nd March:
A quiet day after last night's session. Breakfast at 10:00 followed by me babysitting whilst Aom & Mother went out shopping for the big party at the family house in Surin on the 6th.
Later on around 8pm we popped out for a 90-minute foot massage in Soi 8... excellent and extremely relaxing.
Friday 3rd March:
After breakfast it was a BTS skytrain trip to Ratchathewi BTS Station, on the Sukhumvit Line. Reason for this was to get hold of a new Aircard for this computer. The WiFi in the apartment is crap and not very secure. This took some doing to find a compatible Aircard; it's considered "old-tech" now, but it's relatively cheap and does all I need it to do. It took four different units before finding one compatible with the latest Mac OS; and, of course, it had to be the most expensive 4G one!
Later on the whole family visited a bistro off Sukhumvit Road near Asok which is run partly by one of Aom's cousins.
This bistro has very significant memories for me as it was where I met my future wife, Khemjira (aka Aom). She was working there for her cousin trying to get monies to get back to University.
We had dinner there and then taxied back in the rush-hour traffic.
Later on, when Jack had gone to sleep, we left him in his Grandmother's hands and popped out for one or two drinks down in Sukhumvit Soi8. It was our last night at the Bangkok apartment.
At least that was the intention as we had an early morning start before travelling 7 hours up to Surin.
But, alas, a couple of drinks degenerated into the daft decision to walk to Soi Cowboy. To anyone unaware of this Soi, it’s a single (not very long} road but it’s packed solid with Go-Go bars; seedy, yes, but good fun to sip drinks and watch the odd assortment of human traffic stroll by.
After these drinks, we strolled back to Soi 4 and popped into Hilary4 bar for a final few. By then it was 3am and no suitcases packed before being picked up by our smart limo minibus at 11:00 in the morning and our intrepid driver, Thawon.
Forced ourselves awake at 07:30 and dashed for a quick breakfast to allow time to pack cases.
There's little chance of changing money in Phanom Dong Rak; only the banks 25 miles away in Pratas. So it was a case of walking down to get a decent exchange rate at one of the Exchange kiosks. The GBP-THB exchange rate at time of writing is appalling at 42.60THB; the lowest I've seen it.
Thawon and his minibus arrived on time at 11:00 and we were on the road soon after. Uneventful journey; very comfy in the large 15-seater A/C minibus. Arrived at Phanom Dong Rak just under 6 hours later.
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