Pedro had booked a taxi that would pick me up at 6 am, and he was the one who woke me up at 5.50 am :) Thankfully I had packed my bags the night before, so I could just wear my clothes, say hasty thank yous and goodbyes and run to the waiting taxi.

Passing through Vietnamese immigrations was not as straightforward as one would expect. The woman behind the counter looked at me suspiciously for a really long time - long enough for the polite smile on my face to first slowly fade away, then turn into a frown, then a smirk, then a nervous laughter and finally break into an uncomfortable sweat. By now I probably actually looked like a suspicious fellow. The lady then called for backup and four other immigration officers showed up. At this point, I was practically shitting bricks. All of them took what felt like an eternity to compare my face to the picture in my passport. At long last, they let me through, although very very reluctantly. I was no doubt relieved, but also flabbergasted. I can understand immigration officers being cautious when a foreigner is entering their country, but I couldn’t imagine why they made such a big deal about someone leaving.

Last snap taken in Vietnam

Once I landed in Bangkok, the first thing I had to do was to get myself a visa for Thailand. Honestly, I thought it was downright ridiculous that I had to get a visa even if I was flying out of Bangkok in just a few hours. But that was what was required, and there was nothing I could do except get in line for getting a visa on arrival.

The queue was incredibly long, and moving incredibly slowly. Thankfully, I had a lot of time until my next flight, so there was no real reason to worry. After about 10 minutes of standing in queue, I sat myself down on the floor, opened my netbook, connected to the public wifi, and started surfing. People around me were giving me dirty looks because I was happily sitting, while they probably thought it below their dignity to sit :) A European backpacking couple had no such qualms, and they also sat down on the floor soon afterwards.

The multi-leveled Suvarnabhumi International airport

Another view on the inside

Once I had the visa, I could leave the airport. Since I still had a few hours to kill, I took the airport shuttle to the public transportation center, and got lunch there. So my last international lunch (for now) was at the same place where I’d had my first international lunch (on this trip) with my friends almost exactly one month ago.