30th – 31st – Return to Bangkok and flying home

It was a gentle not too early morning when we checked out of the hotel and packed the bus for the final time. The drive across the border to Thailand and from there to Bangkok was fairly uneventful. 

The border crossing was something else, though. Everybody crossing the border were herded into a large area with an escalator in one end, and every 10-ish minutes a guard let through a large number of people, moving the gathered group of people slowly forward. There weren’t many there when we arrived so we didn’t have to wait long before we were let though. Perfect – short wait at the border! We arrived at the top of the escalator – and found ourselves in a large room, maybe 30x30 meters. And here there was a queue, tightly snaking its way through to the immigration booths in the other end. What I had expected to be a short wait turned out to be a more than 2 hours queueing.

We all eventually got through in an orderly fashion, and coming out on the other side we had a quick lunch before we got back onto the bus and continued the journey.

Arriving in Bangkok we checked in and had a few drinks at the hotel bar before leaving for a farewell dinner in a restaurant close by. The menu was quite expansive, both local and more western food so everyone was happy.

Sunset over Bangkok seen from the bar.

Returning to the hotel it was nicely timed with when I was to leave, so I said goodbye to the rest of the group, grabbed my bags and took the train to the airport. There I checked in, enjoyed a non-existing queue at the priority security check and immigration, spent some time in a nice but crowded lounge before boarding and flying non-stop home.  I managed to get some sleep on the flight so I only had time to watch The Meg, King of Thieves and the first episode of The Gifted.

And with that another trip was successfully completed. Like my previous trip to Thailand, Laos and Vietnam this trip was a bit out of the ordinary from what I am used to, but my last trip made me want to come back, and hearing stories from my previous travel companions about how the rest of their tour went I just knew I had to come back. Unfortunately I didn’t feel the synergy in the group this time was as good as before (probably also has something to do with me arriving into a group that has had a lot of time to get to know each other) but in the end things went well and nobody ended up killing each other, so that was a success. And apparently on the first night my roommate got so annoyed (and sounding offended) by me allegedly snoring, so instead of poking me to get me to roll over for the entire trip he got his own room. I was a bit taken back by this nuclear option, but having a room by myself made my attempts at getting him to save his money very negligible.

Big thanks to Britt, Brian, Ben, Kimberly, Jane, Lee, Tracy and everyone else I’ve forgotten, our guide Sovann and the numerous local guides and drivers we met along the way. Hope we all get to meet again some time!

Full album can be found here.