Namaste Thailand: An Indian Traveler’s Tale|| 27Mar 2025

Hello friends, how are you all?
So today, I’m going to share details about my recent international trip with you all. In this post, you’ll find out how much it cost and how we planned the entire trip.

Trip On

We had decided on this trip about two months ago. A total of four of us were supposed to go — all bachelors. We decided to visit Thailand, and one day, we all gathered at Priyank’s house where we finalized the itinerary. That night, the four of us sat together and made a complete plan about how and when we were going.

Itenary

The next day, we met again at Priyank’s place because although the plan was finalized, no bookings had been made yet — and without bookings, we didn’t feel confident about the trip. So, we decided that we would sit together that night and at least book the flight tickets.

Flight ticket Ahmedabad to Bangkok 2800 Steem

We had initially set a budget of just ₹30,000 per person for the entire trip, but honestly, I wasn’t fully convinced that it would be possible. Still, what could we do? That night, we all got together and first booked the flight tickets for both departure and return. As you know, we bachelors always find ways to manage money — everyone used credit cards and checked all possible options to reduce the total fare. Everyone booked tickets using separate PNRs.

Unfortunately, tickets for two of our friends didn’t go through — their payments got stuck, while the other two tickets, mine and Listrin D’Souza’s, were successfully booked. So we decided to wait for the refund of the failed transactions, and a few days later, we all met again at my place.

Now, when we were booking the remaining two tickets, we noticed that there was a two-day difference in the travel dates between the earlier and new bookings. That night, we spoke to customer care and requested a date change. Because of that, I had to pay an additional ₹12,000. So, my total ticket cost for the round trip to Thailand came out to ₹28,000.
The flight was from Ahmedabad to Bangkok.

Now let me tell you what happened: just three days before our trip was supposed to start, we found out that the manager of my two other friends suddenly resigned. Because of this, a call came from the pan-India manager saying that they would have to cancel their trip.

They tried hard to request permission, saying “please let us go this time, it won’t happen again,” but since it was the month-end and a lot of office work needed to be handled, their team became completely dependent on just these two after their manager left. So, they had no choice but to cancel their trip.

Hearing this, both of us also thought about cancelling our trip. But by then, everything — from tickets to all other arrangements — was already done, so finally we decided to continue with the trip and face whatever would come.

In the next few days, we booked flight tickets for other destinations to complete the rest of the trip. We were reaching Bangkok at 3:40 AM, and on the same morning, we booked a 6:40 AM flight to Phuket, which cost ₹4000, roughly equal to 400 steem.

Shopping time

After booking all the tickets, Listrin and I went to a mall in Ahmedabad on Sunday for shopping, where we bought beach-style T-shirts. After shopping, we returned home, and for the whole week at the office, the only discussions were about how we would manage everything there, where we would visit, and so on.

Then came the day — March 27 — the day we were supposed to leave. That day, first, we went for a team lunch organized by the office. During lunch, our colleagues suggested that we exchange cash into Thai Baht so that we wouldn’t face any trouble there. So, we got ₹60,000 exchanged into Thai Baht. We went to the currency exchange office, collected the currency, and returned to the office.

Way to Airport

After that, around 5:30 PM, we left the office for home, packed the remaining stuff in our bags, and at 6:30 PM, we booked a cab for Ahmedabad International Airport. The cab arrived near our house in a little while; we loaded the bags and headed to the airport. We reached the airport in about 40 minutes, completed our check-in, went through immigration, and were finally waiting for our flight on time.

Finally we trip started

Our flight was at 10:10 PM. We waited for about 1.5 hours, and then the announcement was made, and we were ready to board the flight. We both sat in our respective seats, ready for take-off, and with that, the journey of our Thailand trip officially began.

I will share the rest of the story in the next post. So far, everything is going according to our proper planning. See you in the next diary entry. Until then, bye everyone!