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Sunday, January 12, 2014

An 'Interesting' Day To Fly Out Of BKK

In most of our wandering around Bangkok for the past several days we never would have known there was unrest. There have been times we have noticed though.

A couple of days ago we were walking along a street after getting off the tourist ferry and a kind fellow sitting on a motorbike suggested we turn around because we were heading toward a protest site. Later we read that six people had been wounded by shots fired by passing motorcyclists in this area.

Yesterday as we walked through Lumphini Park we saw a large grouping of pitched tents with men hanging around nearby and one even strumming a guitar. We confirmed later that protesters have been setting up their own little camping areas in various parts of the city in anticipation of the protests.

Today, however, is January 13, the official start of the protests. News reports abound, there are various maps of the protest sites available, and we're even following a useful Twitter feed provided by a local.

As far as we can tell at this point, we should have no problem taking the hotel boat across the river, walking a few yards to the Skytrain station, connecting to the airport train, and traveling from there to BKK, Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Yes, we're planning to leave well in advance of our flights. Our two flights are both on Singapore. Our Bangkok to Singapore flight is scheduled to depart at 3:40 p.m. and is only two hours in length. After a short layover we fly from Singapore to Male, a four-hour flight that lands us in Male at 10:10 p.m. local time, two hour behind Bangkok.

We're supposed to be picked up our hotel, the Hulhumale Inn, at the airport. Tomorrow we fly the seaplane to the Conrad Maldives.

It sounds simple, doesn't it? No reason it can't be.

We're already reading at 7:30 a.m. here that public transit is extremely crowded full of people trying to get to the rallies. We'll find out in awhile.

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