Bel and Phil's Adventures

Bangkok and Ireland

By belandphilsadventures on June 10, 2018

We ended up finding a restaurant in the shopping centre next door, the MBK centre, and found a restaurant with a lot of local people, so we thought we would give it a try. It was interesting and ok, but we wouldn’t rush back there again.

After a very lazy start to our first Friday, we had a leisurely and delicious breakfast at the buffet in the hotel. We then went back up to our room to attempt to resort the bags to reorganise the weight.

We then headed into the MBK Centre for some shopping. One scarf and some hair accessories were the limit as the bags were already at limit due to the items I’m taking over for my sister.

We had a lovely time looking around and I was spoilt for choice in terms of scarves and hair clips. I eventually made a decision and we ended up at Swenson’s for some ice-cream. When Chris, Ryan and I were in Thailand in January 2006, the boys loved going over to Swensons for dessert after dinner. Phil was quite impressed by the banana split he ordered as well. We walked back to the hotel a different way and discovered a Meat eats Fest so Phil was disappointed that he couldn’t eat another bite. Phil needed his sunglasses, so he raced back to the hotel to get them. Then we explored a ‘night market’ across the road (although it was afternoon). Phil found this place in there that was doing a foot massage for 150 Thai Baht for 30 minutes. That’s a whole $6. He was definitely in for that. It looked painful from where I was sitting, but he enjoyed it and said that his foot felt heaps better for it.

We decided to relax back at the hotel, as we had our flight to Europe on Friday night, leaving Bangkok at 11:00 pm. We got ourselves sorted, and packed the bags. We decided to get an early dinner and found another place in the MBK centre – Chicken BonChon. Again going with a place that had a lot of local people. This was amazing and we were both so glad we tried it.

We then went back to the hotel to collect our bags and meet our transfer to the airport. We left the hotel at 7:00 pm to allow for traffic for an hour! It was chaotic. There was a bus broken down out near the airport and the traffic was banked back for kilometres. There were 3 lanes of traffic, however our intrepid driver decided to make the breakdown lane another lane of traffic. We got to the airport and checked in, with no problems at all. After all that hassle, they didn’t even weigh the cabin bags! We made it to our gate and got onto the very full Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.

We were so tired (and still full from dinner) that essentially we went straight to sleep – well Phil did – snoring away. I dozed. I woke up thinking that I hadn’t slept for very long and yet we were five hours into the flight. Phil was still sleeping / with the occasional loud snore. I found it very hard to go back to sleep as I couldn’t get comfortable at all. We have both agreed that we won’t be doing an overnight economy fare again. We arrived in Frankfurt without a hitch. The airport is massive. You could imagine our surprise when we were following directions to our gate for the connecting flight to Dublin when we found ourselves at a train station to get to the other hub. We then went through security screening again and we clearly got onto the wrong line – the slow line.

We got through and found our gate. The plane was parked on the tarmac right near the plane that we had just gotten off. We had no idea why we had to go so far to end up where we started. It makes sense to someone I guess. The flight was uneventful and 1 hour and 40 minutes later we landed in Dublin. We eventually got through immigration (only 1 line for the Non EU passports) and collected our bags. We found a cab and made our way to Megan’s. It was so fabulous to see her and Paul again. Megan’s house is amazing and very stylish.

After we had given her the things that we had brought (the records survived intact – thankfully), we ended up watching the Australia vs Ireland Rugby Union match. Megan, Phil and I were all happy with the result – not so much Paul (Australia won 18 – 9). We had some lovely lunch that Megan and Paul made us – fried rice. Phil and I decided to go for a walk into Dublin. Paul pointed us in the direction of a very scenic walk and off we went.

It was a beautiful sunny day and lots of people were sitting on the banks of the canal and on the grass in St Stephen’s Green enjoying the fabulous weather. We walked down the canal and then headed off into Dublin. We went to Dublin Castle, as we wanted to know where it was so we could explore it when we have more time (it was after 3:30 pm). We then decided to find St Stephen’s Green, as it was on our way back to Megan’s. As we were walking through the streets of Dublin we saw some amazing buildings that looked really pretty in the sunshine. We found St Stephens Green and thought that it was so pretty, with people out picnicking, playing games or just strolling around the gardens.

We were both really tired though and decided to head home. We got back to Megan and Paul’s about 4:30 and had a chat with both of them. Paul cooked a beautiful dinner on the bar-b-que, which we had early – about 6:30 pm as jet lag was starting to take its toll (along with my rotten cold which I still haven’t shaken). I made it to 8:30 and headed to bed, Phil not long after me.

We really enjoyed our first day in the city of Dublin and spending time with Megan and Paul. We can’t wait to explore this city further and spend more time with my sister and her husband.