Bangkok Excursion with Little Jay (Jay’s first overseas travel experience) 1 - Tour Planning

Both Sandeepa (my loving wife) and I are displaying so many thing in common. Those not limited to our likes and dislikes, but also to our habits and behavior. So, there’s no doubt both of us love to travel together too...We started travelling together form the wedding day itself and continued even more frequently.

With the arrival of our new little daughter 'Jay', we had to limit our excursions for a while giving  priority to her. After completing couple of months age, once again we began exploring new destinations within the country with our little Jay. However, we wanted to give her a foreign travel experience sooner as possible, after she turned one and half years.

Chosen destination..., Bangkok...

Both of us were so excited in planning our very first overseas tour with our little Jay. We looked for so many travel options and destinations. As Jay was  still under two years of age, we had to concentrate more on her comfort and safety, while choosing a destination.

We didn't want to spend lot of time to travel so long in airplanes and spend more time in airports...  At the same time we didn't want her to expose to major climate changes as well... Further, it had to be within our budgets too... And most importantly, we wanted to plan the travel itinerary for her to experience and enjoy and to make her more happy. So.., after carefully considering pros and cons of each destination, we've finally chosen to explore Bangkok...

Why Bangkok? So many reasons. Firstly, it's a closer destination to Sri Lanka, thus travel time is around four hours. There are lot of child friendly excursions and activities. Travel cost and expenses were manageable and well within our budget. I have visited Bangkok couple of times before, so I knew the place a little. At the same time, we wanted to do some shopping for us as well. Hence, Bangkok was a perfect match to fulfill all our requirements.

Travel Plan & Itinerary 

After carrying out lots and lots of research and after so many arguments, we decided to have a 4 nights/5 days tour to Bangkok from 15th to 19th April. We have finalized our five day travel plan for the trip as follows.

• Day One - Arriving to Bangkok early in the morning, check-in to the hotel, some sight seeing and shopping around the area during the day  & evening 'Dinner Cruise'.
• Day Two - Visit 'Dream world'
• Day Three - Visit 'Safari World'
• Day Four - A full day for shopping...
• Day Five - Tour around the city & get ready to return

As we were travelling with little Jay, we didn't tried to have a busy tour schedule with so many attractions, as we wanted to save enough time to spend in each and every attraction. We wanted to make sure that our little daughter is having a relaxed and enjoying experience.

Airline, Transfers & Accommodation

Airline

Since it was a short tour of five days, it was very important to choose a flight schedule which gives us the maximum tour duration. So we searched for fight schedules departing from Colombo late night or early morning, to arrive in Bangkok as early as possible. Similarly, we wanted to have the return flight as later as possible in the returning night.This will allow us complete five days to spend in Bangkok.

April is a month which normally the airfares are little too high compared to some other periods. However, we had no choice but to travel during April, as we have already scheduled our annual laves during the month of April. Fares of 'Sri Lankan Airlines' and 'Thai Airlines' were too expensive for our travel dates. We found 'Thai Lion' very economical, but both their departure and arrival flights were schedules in the middle of the day. This will almost take two days of our tour.

Another option available was 'Air Asia'. Even though 'Air Asia' didn't operate a daily flight between Bangkok and Colombo, there were scheduled 'Air Asia' flights for bot our departure (FD141) and arrival (FD140) dates. FD141 is departing from Colombo at 10.30 pm and arriving to Don Mueang Airport, Bangkok at 4.00 am in the morning. similarly FD141 is departing from Bangkok at 7.50 pm and arriving to Colombo at 9.50 pm. So, 'Air Asia' was a perfect match for our requirement, so we decided to choose the same.

Accommodation

I have traveled to Bangkok two times before, and in both earlier instances I stayed at 'Eastin Hotel - Makkasan'. It's a four star hotel located on Makkasan Road in the Pratunam Area. It's a convenient location for many famous shopping complexes and markets. Their facilities and service was commendable. So, we choose 'Eastin Hotel, Makkasan' for us to stay in Bangkok.

View from our room in 29th floor of Eastin Hotel

We've selected a tour operator in Bangkok to transfer us to Hotel and back to Don Meaung airport when returning.

Rameka Travel & Leisure helped us in reserving our air-tickets, accommodation and transfers, and also helped us in arranging Thailand visa of three of us without any hassle. We're thankful and we highly recommend their service.

Passes and Tickets to Attractions

To be in safe side, we decided to arrange the tickets, passes and transportation to attractions as early as possible, prior to our travel dates. We browsed and compared many online options to do so, but were not that confident on what might we get and the level of the services. While we looking for options, a friend suggested us to try Savari Travels, a tour operator in Bangkok, owned and operated by Sri Lankan.

They helped us at arrange the tickets to Dinner Cruise, Dream World & Safari World log with transfers from our hotel. The price quotations we got from them were the best rates we got by tying out so many local and foreign operators.

So, now all is set and ready for the first overseas travel excursion of little Jay.


To be continued....