Still smirking slightly about our Lionel Ritchie welcome to Thailand, we traipsed through immigration and baggage en route to get a taxi to our guest house.

I have to say that Bangkok airport impressed me – it’s huge, modern and well organised. We were through immigration in minutes.  I couldn’t help but compare to the huge queues at Heathrow.  Our bags were two of the first off and these were out within minutes. Again, comparisons to the seemingly endless waits in the UK.

Hot, tired and wide eyed, we consulted our Lonely Planet and saw that Bangkok airport has an official taxi rank for metered taxis. Phew.

We’d pre-booked the excellent Fortville Guesthouse, minutes from Khao San Road.  With my highly organised itinerary print out (thank you, Blackberry Travel), I gave the girl the name and full address of the place, which she passed on to the taxi driver. He clearly didn’t have a clue.

In what would later become a standard entrance for us, there was a massive storm and it poured with rain the entire taxi ride.  The journey was long, not helped by the treacherous road conditions and I was glad when we finally realised we were on Prasumen Road.  Only, we didn’t have a clue on which part of the lengthy road our own little fort was.

Our taxi driver was clearly keen not to miss the place, as he crawled along slower than a 68 year old woman walking checking out every building. Now, I’m all for being cautious and I was keen not to miss it too, but I was pretty confident the boarded up bank was not in fact our mysterious lodgings.

We counted off house numbers. We eventually came to the end of the road. In an attempt to try and gather some bearings, we asked the driver which end of the road we were on – the river end or the inland end. Cue vague and hazy response.

Try again. “Where is the river?”

No response.

Digging out the Lonely Planet again (thank you Rebecca!), we pulled up the map and pointed out where the hostel was.  Trying to establish where we were, we asked the driver to point it out. Light on. Glasses on.

He had no bloody clue.

We finally realised we were at the wrong end of the road, and asked him to turn around. We were pulled in tightly behind a van and not moving. Keeping on asking to turn around, we realised that he couldn’t actually turn around.

Reverse didn’t work.

So, out jumps OH in the pouring rain and they both push the car back out on the street.  Sat in the back, watching headlights rush towards the rear window, I realised too late that perhaps I should have jumped in the front and, you know, steered.

But, with much hysterical giggling from the taxi driver, we’d made it to our first port of call safe and sound.

Although I should have known it would be an interesting taxi ride when he shut the boot with a bungee cord.

CatDog xx