Travel Day 861 –Bangkok to Kolkata, INDIA
It was a pretty Active Travel Day today as I was going to Bangkok, Thailand and then to Kolkata, India…
Taxi Ride to the Hostel in Kolkata, India
I was scheduled to leave Manila at 11pm yesterday, arrive in Bangkok at 1.30am, then sleep on a bench until maybe 8am, check back in and leave at 10.30am for Kolkata. The plan sounded quite good and actually left enough time for resting and having breakfast at the airport. But then my flight from Manila was delayed and we didn’t arrive in Bangkok until 3.30am. Luckily then I asked for the Air Asia check-in and learned that it was actually at a different airport about one hour away…
So there went my well planned night, and after a 1.5 hour nap, I had to deal with shuttle busses, immigration formalities, changing money and that good stuff one doesn’t like to think about early in the morning after not being able to rest. But luckily it all worked out well. The only lesson to be learned was once again to look more carefully at every single detail when using budget airlines, even the name of the airport…
Main Road of my Area in Kolkata, India
Arriving in India was great. This time around I was not staying in the typical tourist area and so even getting to the hostel was a bit of a challenge, but once arrived, everything was at least more authentic and local. The entire area seemed to be mainly residential with a university campus close by. The big advantage of this local area was that not a single person tried to hassle me for money or anything else and everyone just simply seemed to be in awe to see a foreigner stroll along the streets…
The downside on the other hand seemed to be that the facilities were also not set up for visitors. While this may sound great in the first place, finding an internet café in the area became quite a big challenge. After about one hour and asking around I finally found one with a really slow connection. While this was good enough for checking emails on the fly, it seemed already that it would become quite a challenge to maintain my blog when not being able to upload any files…
Residential Area at Night in Kolkata, India
Well, I guess my main reason of being here was to learn Tabla anyway. While a bit concerned at fist, once I had my first chai on the street, I felt a lot better and thought that everything would probably come together somehow over the next couple of days… : )
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