Where did I disappear again

Hey Hive! It’s been a rough couple of months. I haven’t posted in quite a long while but it’s not just because I ran out of content. 😄 I had to renew my work permit to stay in Thailand and it turned out my passport was expiring in 3 months. I was so sure I had at least an extra year for it to be valid but 2 years without traveling outside the country got me confused I guess. So here I was on an emergency flight back to Bulgaria to get my new passport ASAP and then travel back to Thailand. If only it is as that easy..

Trip back home

Since I had to do everything really quickly I had no time to hang about so I got on pretty much the first flight I could. I hate big unexpected expenses and this one was forming to be humongous. Plane tickets were unfortunately the smallest part of my troubles. Since covid spread in Thailand is at its peak at the moment, they are going completely nuts with regulations. In order to get back to the country, you need to book a special Alternative State quarantine hotel for 15 days after your return. These hotels are in a system with the government and they only hold people in quarantine (either positive for covid with no symptoms yet or travelers). It doesn’t matter if you have a vaccine, pcr, antigen or all 3 of these. Everyone that enters needs to quarantine. Only problem was, without booking a hotel, you cannot enter the country and literally all the hotels I messaged were fully booked. Prices started going up rapidly and responses were the same. On the day before my flight a hotel emailed me to say they had a room opening for me because someone canceled their stay and I instantly booked it.
Now “happy” that was sorted, I could fly back home for the first time in 2 years. It was a bit surreal that I was going back home. It was so sudden that I couldn’t even get excited and since I was on a very tight schedule (4 days), I didn’t know if I could meet anyone. My father and brothers live in the capital where I was doing my documents but my mom and grandma both live pretty far away in my hometown Varna. I didn’t have the time to go there at all and it was a bit sad to have traveled from so far and not be able to see them.

My flight was with the Dutch airlines and was transferring to Bulgaria from Amsterdam. The first flight was 12 hours long and it was so empty. Everyone had at least 2 free seats next to them and people on the middle row had 4 all to themselves. I was sitting near the window so I could lay down on “only” 3 seats. I don’t usually have problems sleeping in a plane but this time around I would sleep like a baby, waking up once in a while to turn around or eat. It was a pleasant experience for sure on this flight. So far so good!

Amsterdam to Bulgaria was a short but a bit of a rougher flight. Plane was also fully packed but I had my Nintendo with me so I had some Monster Hunter Rise time.
Once I got out of the airport it was like I entered a different world. For 2 years in Asia I haven’t seen any people in public without a mask. In Bulgaria it was hard to see even one person wearing one and often if they did, they wore it under their nose (which pretty much misses the point in wearing them at all). Even so the country is one of the lowest risk countries in Europe. I really felt like I was getting back to a place where things are back to the “old normal”.

Now I had 4 days to change my address (had to have my address in the capital in order to apply for a new passport from there), get a new ID card, new passport, get a “Certificate of Entry” for Thailand (which I had no idea how to get) and a new pcr before I get back.
The address and passport I managed to do really quickly. In the capital we have an express renewal that takes only 6 hours to make. I needed that asap because that certificate document was going to use my new passport. I was pretty concerned about the COE because I couldn’t do it with the Bulgarian consulate. We don’t have a Thai embassy and that means every document for Thailand gets processed by the Romanian embassy which adds an extra step that adds more time and I didn’t have that time. On the official website where you apply for this document it says that it could take up to 6 working days to be processed and I had only 3.

We found a tourist agency that was helping their customers with these certificates in Bulgaria and I managed to arrange to quickly do it with their help. My certificate came out a day before I had to fly back and with that I was ready to go. Damn that was stressful.

Meanwhile my mother @nelinoeva decided it would be a shame if we didn’t see each other while I’m here (and it really would’ve been). She got on a bus to Sofia and booked a hotel for a day to stay and visit me. I’m really glad she did and we managed to see each other. We went around the two big parks in Sofia looking for birds. The first day our walk was quickly ruined by the rainy weather, but on the next we were blessed with some sun. Well.. only for a few hours and then we got soaked again because the rain just wouldn’t leave us alone.
I had my camera on me but I didn’t take many photos on this trip. I had very little time to carry a camera around with me. I couldn’t even meet my friends with a few small exceptions. Very soon it was time to fly back.

Here are a few photos from the park. I didn't take my camera with me the second day because I thought it would rain again and it turned out I was wrong. I was so stressed with the whole situation though that the last thing I was thinking was taking photos. A bit disappointed now that I missed out on getting some nice shots from back home.

One more thing I really missed was the food. I didn't have that much Bulgarian traditional food while I was back but the little I did I enjoyed to the fullest. Here is some homemade stuff we had for dinner.

I love Thai food and most Asian cuisines but Bulgarian food is still one of my favorites and impossible to find where I live.

Returning to Thailand

My flight back was gonna be a lot longer. I had a 12 and a half hour transit at the Amsterdam airport which made my total travel time from Bulgaria to Thailand 26 hours long. Surprisingly the 12 hours at the airport passed real quick. Having unlimited wi fi and a nintendo with me really made my stay there pleasant. I only wished it wasn’t so cold. 😄
The long flight back was as empty as the first one. I slept through it like a baby and finally arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport. The only plane arriving was ours, which was baffling.. this airport is massive and usually so busy. It was sad seeing it like that. We had to stop at 4 checkpoints for immigration. Regardless of that this was the easiest entry I’ve had into Thailand. Immigration officers were in a nice mood, laughing and joking even. Once you exit immigration and get to the main exit, the hotel people are there to pick up everyone. You find the person holding a sign with your hotel name and they send you to a shuttle bus.
My hotel was a bit far on the other side of Bangkok. Even so, the city was like a ghost town. Roads were so empty that we got there in only 35 minutes or so.
The hotel itself wasn’t terrible but definitely wasn’t the best thing ever. It was in an Egyptian theme and even my room was full of Egyptian motives and mosaic walls. I wasn’t able to leave my room at all for 15 days with the small exceptions when I had to get out for 2 min and get a covid test.
I couldn’t believe the regulations and after coming back from a place where people don’t even wear masks it was a complete shock. In the first 10 days they made me take 3 covid tests. They would call me twice a day to ask for my temperature.. It was madness.
I had my laptop and Nintendo with me and with how introverted I am, I was sure I wasn’t going to lose my mind but there was one thing that really made this experience unpleasant. The food..
The food they served was some of the worst food I’ve had in my life. Sometimes they would serve something edible but some days it was just ridiculous. They served me pork that was raw.. I mean raw raw. There were pieces of it that were completely red and soft. I guess they had a new strategy of killing covid with giving people worms.. I threw so much food away in those 15 days. Anyhow I did survive even if they gave me a stomach infection.
After 15 days I finally got back home and couldn’t be happier!

Couldn’t wait to see Nat and the doggies. Had the warmest welcoming home and it really is something when you get all of that love thrown at you at once. Whiskey and Stormi went completely nuts when they saw me walk in through the front door. 😄

Now that I’m finally back home, I still have some documents to sort out for my visa but I’m getting into the normal rhythm of life again. Going from self quarantine into a hard quarantine really got me out of Hive for a while. Makes sense since my blog has been primarily travel oriented and the furthest I travelled in the past month was to the kitchen. Can’t really travel much around Thailand at the moment but I can at least share photos from around Bangkok. Hope everyone’s doing fine and to see you again in the comments!

Where Did I Disappear Again?

Trip back home

Returning to Thailand