The Road to 40 Day 239/365: Bye Thailand!

This day marked the end of our Thailand, as we spent much of it traveling.

We planned on having a massage right before leaving the hotel, but the logistics made it quite difficult to schedule everyone. James and I agreed that both Che and Steph should get it while we stay back at the hotel.

We had breakfast at around 9:30am, and Vino joined us for the first time. We were anticipating long queues in the airport, so we thought it would be best for him to have heavy breakfast.

While Che and Steph went for their massage, Vino and I went on one last run at Platinum. We were looking for a pajama set for Che and maybe a bag for Vino. I like that Vino wasn’t settling, and he has a particular style that he preferred. I think he’s a better shopper than me at that age which, I think, is important.

He should know the value of money and understand how hard he must work to maintain the lifestyle he has gotten used to.

I misunderstood the budget I was supposed to be working with to get Che’s pajamas and ended up not buying anything for her as well.

We headed off to the airport and had a little hiccup while checking our bags in. It wasn’t much of an issue, though, and everything went smoothly from there. They had automated gates to get into the immigration gates, multiple lines for x-ray scanning, and automated immigration lanes.

We were in and out of that process in less than 15minutes. It was pretty impressive and sad at the same time.

From the streets to the airport, Bangkok felt like a different city than it was eight years back when we were there. When before, it felt similar to the streets of Manila, this time around, it was more like a place that Manila should have been.

There was traffic, but it moved. Their highways were a bit complicated, owing to multiple exits and flyovers. Their airport rivals that of Incheon, and all the processes were smooth.

All this, I feel like, happened during the pandemic when everything was shut down – since no one was allowed outside, they took it as a chance to make improvements, and now they’re maintaining everything well.

Meanwhile, our airport is still much of a hassle, but it has improved – but only because it was privatized.

It’s disgusting how useless our government is. I can’t blame it solely on the leadership. After all, even if my pick to win actually assumed office, it’s highly possible that we would still be experiencing similar crap.

Corruption is deeply ingrained in our public offices, and unless it gets cleaned up from the bottom, we’ll always get the shorter end of the stick. Of course, it takes a strong leader to begin that clean up.

It won’t happen next year, next election, or even next decade. But I do hope that small steps are done because our neighboring countries are all looking like they’re in the right side of progress already.

Anyway, we reached Singapore at around 8:30pm. We had dinner before parting ways and went to our respective homes.

We’ll have Sunday before getting back to regular programming.