After saying all the goodbyes yesterday, our final day in PP was a much more relaxed one. We had a trip to the Russian Markets in the morning scheduled, which our students were looking forward to – a few of the girls especially had been honing their haggling skills down to a fine art!
The Bus 3 crew
The markets were similar to the Central Markets we had visited earlier in the week, with multiple shops with the same stuff, but the Russian Markets were smaller, a lot more crowded and had much more stuff packed into a small area. My group of girls (the TTTT – Tacky Touristy Tat Team) had a mission – go in, get small gifts for family, and have as much fun haggling in the process. The girls were buying tshirts and those baggy patterned pants they like for $3US a pop, and I bought some jewellery, hand fans and the occasional t-shirt (Tin Tin in Cambodia was a favourite).
Leaving the hotel – all the kids with their patterned harem pants!
Then it was time to return to the hotel and stuff all our prized purchases into our bags ready to hit the airport. The group waved goodbye to the wonderful hotel staff who had been so accommodating to us, and headed into the traffic.
And stopped.
It seemed there were protests happening at the Central Markets where we’d been earlier in the week, and as traffic needed to go around the area, there were snarls all over the already incredibly busy and traffic-laden city. It took an hour to get 1km down the road, and as we had looked out the window at the same tuktuk cart piled high with garlic, chili and mango (which was looking increasingly tempting as the wait continued), we were starting to worry about our flight, even though we had left the hotel 4 hours before our flight!
Just as we were really starting to let panic creep into the edges, we managed to move past the worst of it, and things were a lot easier from then. Phew!
PP airport was pretty small, but the checkin and security still took a long time because of our big group. The plane was a bigger (and hopefully smoother!) one than the little 2×2 we’d arrived in – an A300. A much smoother flight, but because we climbed and descended quite quickly, all of our ears were popping continuously!
At Bangkok airport we had more happy/sad farewells, as three of the boys were peeling off to visit one of their mates who lives here, as well as me sneaking in a cheeky 48 hour transit break! The boys’ friend did me a huge favour of writing out the hotel’s location in Thai so I didn’t need to stress so much about the taxi ride, and all went off without a hitch. Well, except for the taxi that I was in, which really needed a bit of love, and stalled every time we had to stop for tolls or lights! (Hey, I’m just happy that people stop for the lights here, unlike PP!) I’m not quite sure what he wrote down, as I don’t read Thai at all, but the taxi rank staff member read it and laughed, so he may have just been really specific about the location of the hotel, or he might have written something… “interesting” there! 🙂
Fruit platter I’d asked for on arrival… with choccies in a mini bird cage!
I’m living it up a bit while I’m here, staying at the new Hilton (it’s a pretty good price since the baht is a great exchange with the AU$, plus I thought I might need a bit of luxury after working in PP – although now I’m getting the guilts about spending so much after seeing the poverty of the kids in PP!! In any case, it’s prepaid, so it’s done…) It’s a lovely new hotel, and after a lovely shower in the huge bathroom with ceiling rain-shower, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow!
Two Weeks Away 