Well we said goodbye to our nice hotel in Pattaya today and moved on to Bangkok which I was really looking forward to! Before we left though there was one last breakfast to have and some pictures to take of the breakfast buffet! It is quite a beautiful setup actually and quite diverse in its offerings!
Next we had a pick up scheduled for 2pm for a SUV transfer to Bangkok. Now the last transfer that I booked was really good – the lady who picked us up at Bangkok and drove us to Rayong had a really nice comfortable car and we (particularly me) did not arrive in pain. Same with our transfer from Rayong to Pattaya. Not so for this trip! I believe the difference was that there is only one highway between Bangkok Airport and Rayong and Rayong to Pattaya however once you get closer to Bangkok (lets say about an hour away) one can choose between the highway and the “lower” road which also is considerably more BUMPY. The van we were in did not have much in the shock department so it was a very uncomfortable ride. On top of that, the service that I used to hire the driver said he spoke English and not a word of English did he speak so we could not get him to get back on the highway. I would have been happy to pay the highway tolls (although they should have been included) however that was pretty hard to communicate. I was SO GLAD when we got to the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel!
One thing that really has helped during our travels and when I get into situations with anxiety or pain like this is that I have a newer cell phone and it has an eSIM slot which has allowed me to turn off my Telus SIM and switch to a world wide data provided which has been awesome. I am able to follow Google Maps to see where we are going (and if we are going the right way) and that has helped a lot! Technology sure has changed in the last year since we traveled to Italy/Spain!
The Royal Orchid Sheraton looks to be a beautiful hotel! It sure has lots of orchids in its lobby! We checked in and got to our room, which I had upgraded to a suite using my Suite Nights which is a benefit of the Bonvoy (Marriott) program. As our suite was not ready when we checked in at 4pm, we spent the late afternoon/early evening in the lounge having both refreshments and some light appetizers. As the light appetizers consisted of some pretty wheat based things, they brought me some pasta with tomato sauce and bread which was awesome!
WOW. Simply WOW. We have been upgraded to suites before but this one took the CAKE! This is a 28 floor hotel and I am not sure how many floors have suites – we were on the 20th floor and there were 2 on our floor. The hotel is like a Y with the bottom of the Y being at the river and the 2 suites sharing half of each side of the Y. I think we had the better view than the other suite as we had a 180 degree view of the river as it turned in front of our suite and meandered along. See the pictures below. It was wonderful to watch early in the morning, during the day and later at night.
























And now we have arrived in Bangkok – river life!

















