so, how are you getting home.
any good plan bees out there?
gotta get to hong kong by dec 2

thanks

harvey

Option 1: Take a car or train to either Cambodia or Malaysia and fly out from there. If you're going via Cambodia be advise that you'll have to spend at least 24 hours day before you can fly out - something to do with their visa requirement.

Option 2: Take a car or train to either Chiang Mai or Phuket(Cathay and Dragon Air have direct flights) and fly out from there.

Good Luck!

Option 3: Charter a plane!

Do you currently have an air ticket? What airline? From where?

i only wish that would happen to me

I can think of worse places to be stuck! As someone who is retired, I guess it would not really matter all THAT much if I could not make it home...

I'm just hoping to be able to make it INTO BKK in a couple of weeks!

Carol

Hi Carol
You say you hope to get there within two weeks. When are you planning to be there exactly? My dh and I are still planning to be in BKK 3-11 Jan and 25-30th Jan. Are there any planned get togethers in BKK for that time?
Sue

I'm supposed to arrive the evening of the 11th and Carol is scheduled to arrive a week later.

sue, there is a thread on a GTG around dec 21...

I have been meaning to put together a complete trip report, but thought I'd quickly hop in here. I know the protest is over, but my husband and I got stuck in BKK last week. We were in BKK for 4 days, then supposed to fly to Siem Reap for another 4 days. However, the flight to SR was cancelled. After a minimal amount of research, we decided to just go for it and take taxis to SR (our flight home was from SR, so we had to get there eventually).

Taxi from BKK to the border at Poipet was 2500b (about $75) and the trip took about 3 horus. Crossing the border on foot at Poipet was completely intimidating. After you get you Thailand stamp, you cross over and have to get your Cambodian visa. There are people every where trying to tell you where to go and what to do (and trying to scam you). And for some reason we were the only tourists in sight. After finding the visa office, the police tried to tell us that it would cost 1000b (about $30) for the visa, but I knew pretty clearly that it should only be $25USD. So, we walked away and went to another ticket window and paid our $25. We didn't have photos with us, which you're supposed to, so they charged us an extra 100b for that, which we just gave up and paid.

Then, you have to walk 25 more yards through the crazy, crowded streets to get your visa stamped. After that, they make you get on a bus that takes you 2 minutes down the road to a central office where you can get a taxi. The cost of a taxi to Siem Reap was another 2500b, so we connected with a pair of backpackers from Australia and split the cost with them. It wasn't the most comfortable ride, with 5 adults in a car the size of Toyota Corolla. The drive from Poipet is mostly on dirt road that's in pretty rough condition. It was a 3 hour drive.

So, after 7 hours we finally arrived in SR. The taxi stopped just outside of town and we grabbed a tuk tuk to take us to our hotel.

It was a crazy, insane adventure. I had the fodors guide to Thailand with me and I was disappointed that it didn't have more info in it about the border crossing and all the various buildings that you needed to go to. I haven't travelled all that much, so it was a pretty frightening experience at the time, although good to laugh about now. The flight home from Cambodia went through Seoul, so we had no problems getting home.

Just thought you might like to hear the adventures of how one of us who was stuck in Thailand managed to get out!

Shandris-thanks for sharing your advetures with us. It sounds like everything worked out for you. Apparently the road from Poipet to SR is quite the ride.

as very few people take the land crossing option, i do not find it odd that the travel guides do not include info about the experience...remember you said you felt like the only tourists around..

This border crossing has been on the backpacker trail for yonks.

There's acres of stuff about this in Lonely Planet thorntree website. It apparently famous for rip-offs and touts. They have you trapped in no-man's land THEN trapped again with taxis getting to SR.

For anyone in the future needing info about the overland trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap, the definitive info is at www.talesofasia.com

I was scheduled to fly from Bangkok on last Thursday. When I read about the airport being shut down on Wednesday I went to my airline office and asked about replacement flights. This was early in the protest and no one knew how long it would take to end.

I got several "possible" suggestions and decided that I would make my own way out of Thailand. My airline switched my departure from Bangkok to Singapore with confirmed seating.

On Thursday I took the only train available (they filled up the sleepers real fast, and only 3rd class was available,) leaving after 10 PM. Arrived in Hat Yai the next day, buses and cheap shared vans were all taken for a ride to the Thai/Malaysia border, finally found a shared van ride to get me and a friend to the Thai immigration office.

Long line at immigration and a longer and slower line at the Malaysian immigration office. No bus or van available from that office and we paid for a taxi ride to Butterworth. At Butterworth we booked the only train ride out to Singapore (via KL) the next morning, only first class was available.

Arrived in Singapore late Saturday night, after 1030 PM and left the following morning for the US.

I wanted a sleeper train from Bangkok but they were the first to go. I wanted a train all the way to Malaysia but they were not available, had to settle for what I could get at the last minute. Being on a train or on a through bus to Malaysia is better and cheaper than using taxis and stop and go travel.

Immigration procedures on the train from Butterworth (near Penang) was on the train for Malaysia at our seats. For Singapore we got off the train with our luggage and went through the immigration procedures in their facility. Then when finished, out a back door and back onto the train for another 20-30 minutes ride into Singapore train station.

I had an important meeting to go to in the US. Made it home by late Sunday night. No fee for changing my flight from BKK to Singapore. I had to pay for the train and taxi rides myself.

Interesting trip.

I just want to jump in here and say that if you do a little homework on the border crossing, it's easy peasy.

If you don't, then it's as described; a bit of a nightmare.

Poipet is possibly the absolute armpit of SEA, or at least one of them.

GOOD FOR YOU for bucking up and getting where you wanted to go!

Usually from Bangkok it is easy to get van/bus transportation to Hat Yai and Penang. I had taken one of these rides before - but the few travel agencies I went to were already fully booked.

The way they usually work is to pick everyone up by van and transfer those passengers to a bus. At various points in the trip, passengers may again be switched to vans to complete part of the trip. At Hat Yai you either take a shared van to Penang if there is only a few people of switch to a bus if there are more passengers at that time.

There were lots of people "escaping from Bangkok" and heading South. I was lucky that I met another passenger at the airline office and he asked to tag along. That was okay with me since I only had to pay half the taxi fares. Plus there was someone to watch the bags when nature calls, etc.

Late at night the buses from the Butterworth train/bus station looked a little shady and we decided to go with the train - it was the same price but a couple hours longer. It was a good choice, there was cheap meals available and you could get up and walk a bit.

OK

Thanksk to those who shared their personal stuck in Thailand stories. I enjoyed reading them all! DH and I always say "Travel is an adventure!" You guys truly lived up to that statement!
Carol

I think you guys are right. Had I known I was going to be doing the border crossing on foot like that, I would have done things a lot differently.

I definitely would have researched things a bit more, and packed backpacks instead of rolling suitcases. It's definitely a Lonely Planet adventure, not a Fodors. We stuck out like sore thumbs! We're pretty proud of ourselves now though.

It's great you made it through it all and got home. I just called a friend's job to see if she's back from BK and she's not. So, she's obviously still stuck there. She's, originally from India, but lives here, in the U.S. now, but her mom has lived in BK for years. She goes once a year to visit her for two weeks. She should have been back by now. Happy Travels!