about Hils
TravelPod Badges
|
  | |  |
Barmy in Bangladesh
Entry 52 of 169 | show all | print this entry |
Tuesday 4th November
Well we didn't make it up the tower in time for the sunset. We watched from the Bangkok traffic as the sun slowly disappeared. By the time we got to the top of the tower it was pitch black. The Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the tallest tower in Thailand and the tallest hotel in the world at 309m. We marvelled at the views over Bangkok, enjoyed a cocktail and then headed back to Khao San Road to pack for our journey to Nepal.
Wednesday 5th November
After a mad day rushing around Bangkok getting everything organised for the trip, we eventually made it to the airport for our flight to Bangladesh. For the first time in my life I was the ethnic minority - on the plane - it felt very very strange. As we taxied for take off we watched a video praying to Allah for our safe journey to Bangladesh. The flight passed uneventfully and we landed in Bangladesh at about 10.00pm. This is when the fun began. We went to immigration who told us to fill out an immigration form. Half way through filling it out we were told we had to go back to transit, the guy watched us fill the rest of the form in before informing us that we didn't need to if we were just transitting, which he knew we were. Back up stairs we went to transit, which consisted of a large desk, behind which sat a couple of men. Round the desk were about twenty foreigners trying to hand over their passports and get a token for the hotel for the night. We stood at the desk for about an hour while nothing happened. At this point about another 10 tourists arrived with their hold luggage. We were informed that we had to go through immigration to get our bags. As we didn't have a visa for Bangladesh (we were just transitting) we weren't allowed through immigration. After standing in a stalemate for a few minutes an American girl announced she was going to get her bag. We followed her as she tiptoed past the immigration official that was sitting just a foot from us in his little box - he just watched us as we sneaked past! We got our bags and went back through immigration to wait for another hour. About 10 of us eventually got to the desk and handed in our passports - I piled them up in a nice neat little pile - only for the official to complain why hadn't we handed them in earlier!! We'd only been standing there for 2 hours with our passports in our hands. One girl had climbed into her sleeping bag and had gone to sleep by this point. I don't know why they just don't have the flight leave Bangkok slightly earlier so we can connect to Nepal the same day. Eventually at about 1.00am we got out the airport and were herded onto a bus and delivered to our hotel, which we weren't allowed to leave (we were officially not in Bangladesh). After a fairly good nights sleep it was back on the bus to the airport. This was my first experience of a third world country and it unnerved me quite a bit, there were just so many people and so much traffic, I was quite glad to be leaving. Thankfully going through the airport the opposite way was a lot more simple and soon we were onboard our flight headed for Kathmandu......
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries by hils, from Bangladesh or try a new search. |
| |
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
42 votes 
This is a top pick!
