I had sent in my recording for the Bloggers Sing Song Project. I thought i sounded rather awful but anyway, just for the fun of it lah!
Monday (9-Jan) was our last day in Bangkok. Our return flight to Singapore was scheduled at 11.45am so we had our breakfast at the hotel and checked out at around 8.30am. 贝's brother had checked for us the day before that if we were to hail our own cab, the fare from the inn to the airport would be 350Baht. If we were to ask the inn to arrange the transport for us, it would be 500Baht.
At the breakfast, 贝 had been paying attention to the cars on the road and noticed that there weren't any vacant cab on the road. It seemed like cabs weren't so readily available on a Monday morning. We didn't wanna risk being late so we asked the receptionist to call a cab for us. It turned out that the 500Baht wasn't for a cab but the hotel's in-house chauffeur service.
Just about 10 minutes after we left the inn, i suddenly realized that i had left my denim jacket in the closet of our hotel room. So we asked the driver to turn back and that cost us another 100Baht plus 60Baht of toll fees because the driver decided to take the expressway instead of the original routes he had wanted to take. I guess he wanted to make up for the time lost for turning back to the inn. Sigh, how absent-minded could i be?!
We arrived at the airport rather early. Before we checked in our luggages, we went to the VAT refund office in the airport to submit our claims. The 7% VAT for stuffs that we bought from various major departmental stores could be claimed back upon departure from Thailand within 60 days from the date of purchase. When we purchased the things, we had to proceed to the Customer Service counters in the departmental stores to fill up and obtain a copy of the VAT refund application form. Passport was needed for the application, and fortunately we brought our passports with us when we went shopping instead of keeping the passports in the hotel's safebox.
The Customs Officer was supposed to inspect the items in our luggages against the application forms but she didn't check and just endorsed the forms. We then proceeded to check in our luggages and enter the departure gate, but we were stopped by the Customs officer at the entrance, asking us to pay for the airport tax. This kinda caught us by surprise as we thought that the airport tax was already included in our Air Asia tickets. Apparently it wasn't; only the Changi Airport tax was included but not the one at Bangkok International Airport. The airport tax was 500Baht per person and luckily we didn't spend all our baht.
Airport tax receipt
After we had done the immigration clearance, we went to submit our endorsed VAT application forms to the Revenue Officer for the cash refund. In the end, i got back 543.02Baht (after deducting an operation fee of 100Baht), just nice to cover the airport tax for one person.
My VAT refund (i had no idea why an item was excluded from the refund)
When we were finally done with all these customs procedures, there was still about an hour more for us to shop around in the airport. I bought a bottle of duty-free perfume for my mom since i didn't get anything for her at all. So much for being a good daughter huh?!
We had a safe landing despite the heavy rain in Singapore (thank God!). We had our late lunch in the airport and then headed home. I was initially wondering how long would it take for the Malaysian Customs Officers at the 2nd Link to check our bags, but he just had one look at the luggages and waved us off. He didn't even ask me to open up the bags for him to look inside. Hmm, what a waste that i didn't buy a few bottles of liquor with such lax inspection.
We reached home at around 6pm, tired but happy.
And so this concludes my first trip to Bangkok... oh, wait, not yet. Just like any first-time travellers to Bangkok, the city had left with me a very unique impression even though all i did were just shopping. I'll pen down my thoughts in the next post.
Labels: travel
