Visiting Panasonic in Bangkok (my two day adventure)

Today I went out to Panasonic, which is a long way from the centre of Bangkok. With thanks to ‘Oh’, the lovely lady at my guesthouse, I found two buses that would take me there. The first was an aircon bus, comfortable and clean, that took me half way. The second was an open-air ‘chicken’ bus, although there were no chickens on it, it was exactly the type of bus that you might imagine chickens sharing with you… Everyone looked at me like I was crazy and farangs (Thai – foreigner) are never seen on buses, but I was determined. It was easy, actually, and my arrival at Panasonic was almost anticlimactic. I waited for hours while a technician looked at my camera, only to quote 5000 baht (Australian $180) to repair. I thought that I could probably buy a whole new camera for that, so said ‘no thanks’ and took my camera home. The trip home was a little more eventful, and I got lost when getting off the first bus, ended up in a shopping mall… that’s always bad news! I asked at information how to find the 501 bus, only to find it doesn’t go past the mall… So I decided to take the easy road, and got a taxi the rest of the way. While I was in the mall, however, I checked out prices of new cameras… I could find a couple that were cheaper than 5000 baht, but most of them were simple, point and shoot cameras without a zoom…. I thought about buying one, but then I worried about international warranties, etc, and got so confused that I gave up. Back at the guesthouse I checked out the internet, and found out that cameras are expensive in Australia and Thailand, but cheap in China and the US. Essentially, I wanted a camera now though, to capture my trip… so I made the decision that although it was expensive I was going to have to trek out to Panasonic the next day again and get it repaired. The next day I went by my combination of aircon bus and chicken bus (to my disappointment, again no chickens) out to Panasonic. First thing in the morning it only took an hour and a half to get there! I sat and waited a couple of hours, only to be told that they needed 3 more hours, so I went back to the mall from the previous day and wandered the aircon shops there, before sleeping on one of the food court tables. At 3pm, I made my way back to Panasonic, collected my camera, which only cost 3065 baht to repair in the end. Bonus! After that I made my way back to Bangkok. This time I was determined to get buses the whole way, so I vaguely communicated to the conductor that I wanted to swap with the 501 bus. She vaguely seemed to understand and told me where to get off, where another local person took pity on me and helped me find the 501 bus stop and work out which direction to go. So I made my way back to Bangkok, after two days basically full of nothing but sitting on buses and in Panasonic headquarters.