heatherx

Okay all you BKK travelers, i have a questions for you.

We will be hiring a driver for a day, we arrive at midnight on a Thursday (12.15.05)...we will be in BKK until Sunday the 18th at 7 pm when we fly to Samui.

So my question for you is: is there a 'best day' to see the sights with a driver. We will have either all day on Friday or all day on Saturday to hire a car.
I mean, we need to take into acct that we will be totally jet laged coming from California...how long does it take to recover from this??

I have traveled to Europe before and know what that jet lag feels like, but this is our first trip to Asia and i belive we will have been traveling for 24 hours before arrival and the time difference will be 15 hours!! An 8 hour time difference i have done - but never 15!

Any tips or suggestions would be so much appreciated! Thank you.

glorialf

Hire the driver for Saturday.

rhkkmk

i find that it takes me a day and 1/2 to get back to normal really and i fly from boston....30 hours door to door...

either hire him on saturday or how about sunday...you will have to get out of your hotel by noon at least so why not pack up early and take all your stuff with you while you tour and then have the driver leave you at the airport at 5...so you could have the full advantage of a driver all day, be out of the hotel on time, and get a "free" comfortable ride to the airport....

book early because these drivers fill their schedules up quickly...i like ratt...

123Go

Recently traveling JFK/BKK/HKT it was 30 hours from our home to hotel bed in Phuket, but only a 12 hour time change. We didn't really find the Asia jet lag to be any worse than the Euro jet lag. What we did was to stay awake the last portion of our trip so when we arrived at our hotel we could go to bed and get a full, uninterrupted full night of sleep. The next morning, we actually felt quite good, had a nice relaxing breakfast by the sea after sleeping in a bit. Actually did a little sightseeing in the afternoon. Good to go the next day and start the vacation in ernest. I agree with Carol, get your bearings and enjoy your hotel on Friday and go for a driver on Saturday.

heatherx

Thank you all very much for your insight.
rhkkmk: My DH has a client who has an office in BKK, the client is arranging the car & driver for us. (i think it will be one of the employees of clients company) I would have called on Ratt if this was not the case. She sounds wonderful!

I really like the idea of hiring the driver for Sunday, I honestly thought that we would not have enough time to see everything on a Sunday, but it really makes perfect sense! I will see if we can arrange that! Thank you rhkkmk!

123go: I also like what you said about trying to stay awake for the last part of the trip and land in BKK ready to sleep. I think we will give that a go. I suppose I had better start looking for a big fat book to read on the long flight over...

I appreciate all of you Fodorites so much! Thank you thank you thank you!

rhkkmk

what we find with the sleep thing is that we stay awake except on part of the trans pacific leg....from toyko to bkk is 6 hours more and we try to stay awake there...so we arrive at the hotel about 1:15AM abd walk around a bit and then get into bed about 2...we find that we are often up at 5 or 6...our time clocks are all messed up..we have a breakfast about 8 and then go to the pool for the morning...by 1 PM i need to get moving out of the hotel...time wasting...we go to river city or something easy...see an old friend or two...then we fall apart...early dinner...something easy and simple...early to bed...good nites sleep, but up early again but quite refreshed...we are 61, so that has some affect on it as well...