At £6 a night, you can't really expect much more.It’s nearly two weeks since I last blogged. We have spent the most amazing and chilled out couple of weeks on Thailand’s Andaman Coast. It’s funny i thought i’d be able to blog loads during this time but i think with the hectic past couple of weeks we just relished doing nothing!
But first, we had to get back to Bangkok. We caught an early morning bus to Bangkok, not too awful. Ten hours, although two of those hours were spent queuing to get back into Thailand. Once through the border we were ‘upgraded’ to a minibus. Hmmmm not quite an upgrade. We definitely got back to Bangkok speedier than the original bus but where we’d left a fairly comfortable air con bus with toilet we were now ‘upgraded’ to a minibus where two seats were taken up with all our bags and the ten of us were squashed into the van, poor Ed had the centre back seat with bags all down by his feet so he couldn’t stretch his legs or see out the front or side windows, pretty dull bus journey! We were relieved to see the skytrain and realise we were back in Bangkok.
Having not known how long we would want in Siem Reap we hadn’t booked any onward travel, we jumped in a tuk tuk and sped to the train station with the hope of getting a sleeper train to Krabi that night. Somewhat naive! Being also a Thai public holiday the train was fully booked for three days! We didn’t fancy hanging around more in BKK so we went to see what the overnight buses to the South were like.
We were sold ‘VIP’ direct tickets all the way to Koh Lanta for the next day (our island destination for New Years Eve) Brilliant we thought, and left the station for a night back in our previous hotel in BKK.
But first, we had to get back to Bangkok. We caught an early morning bus to Bangkok, not too awful. Ten hours, although two of those hours were spent queuing to get back into Thailand. Once through the border we were ‘upgraded’ to a minibus. Hmmmm not quite an upgrade. We definitely got back to Bangkok speedier than the original bus but where we’d left a fairly comfortable air con bus with toilet we were now ‘upgraded’ to a minibus where two seats were taken up with all our bags and the ten of us were squashed into the van, poor Ed had the centre back seat with bags all down by his feet so he couldn’t stretch his legs or see out the front or side windows, pretty dull bus journey! We were relieved to see the skytrain and realise we were back in Bangkok.
Having not known how long we would want in Siem Reap we hadn’t booked any onward travel, we jumped in a tuk tuk and sped to the train station with the hope of getting a sleeper train to Krabi that night. Somewhat naive! Being also a Thai public holiday the train was fully booked for three days! We didn’t fancy hanging around more in BKK so we went to see what the overnight buses to the South were like.
We were sold ‘VIP’ direct tickets all the way to Koh Lanta for the next day (our island destination for New Years Eve) Brilliant we thought, and left the station for a night back in our previous hotel in BKK.
It was nice to be somewhere familiar, to know the streets and the places to go, BKK is probably the only city we will visit a few times over during this trip. Starving we headed straight to the streetfood stall we had eaten at a number of times during our previous visit. The only available seat was above the drain but we knew the food was good so we grinned and bared the smell and placed our order, green curry for Ed, Pad Thai for me. A few moments later a table off the street came available so we moved. Chatting over how nice it was to have some familiar things again we saw things flash past the corner of our eyes, Ed shot me a nervous look and tried to ignore it but it quickly became apparent there was a rat or two keeping us company. Now, we live in London, i’m pretty sure there are rats everywhere and we weren’t TOO worried. But then we started seeing more and Ed kept a close eye on them and saw they were taking the tomatoes out of the low shelves and stealing them away or munching on them.
We couldn’t take it, we left the money for our food we’d ordered and dashed off before it arrived. We were so sad, we’d eaten there quite a lot and the food had been really delicious but seeing how involved the rats were with our food just completely put us off! Heading back to our hotel we munched on omelette/burger and chips-bit safer, it took a while to get back into street food!
After a lazy day at our hotel, catching up on emails, blogging and sorting accommodation for Koh Lanta, we headed to the station to pick up our VIP DIRECT bus armed with Ipods, scarves for warmth in case of too much air con and snacks at the ready.
Due to leave at seven thirty we were taken to stand outside the bus at seven twenty five. Our tickets were checked and we donned our sexy stickers to indicate where we were headed. After making us stand outside with no explanation for an hour they let us on the bus, a fun start to the journey. The strangest thing was that we’d booked a direct bus, yet it was full of folks going to a plethora of island destinations and half of them on the other side of Thailand - on its East Coast....
Still on we got, settled down and tried very hard to snooze. Around 1am they stopped for a toilet break (don’t even ask about the loo on the bus-i got stuck in it momentarily when suitcases fell in front of the door!) and snack break (all an excuse for the drivers to have a cigarette) back on we stopped again around 5.30am and told to all get off. “Change bus” they shouted, so much for direct. Our tickets were checked again and we were given another sticker.
We were told to jump in a minibus that would take us to Krabi (where we could pick up the boat to Koh Lanta), a little while later we were told to get out again. Our stickers were observed and again we got rather fetching new stickers, my top was running out of room for stickers, I hoped they would stop soon.
This time we got told to jump in a pick up truck, I should mention that at each stop we are getting smaller and smaller groups as we get closer to our various destinations. So now we are 8 and we jump in the back of a pick up, surrounded by our luggage. A very short while later, the pick up stops and out we jump, assuming we must be walking distance to the pier (our first sight of the Andaman Sea). Again stickers are exchanged for another brighter colour sticker, an aggressive sales woman trying to find us expensive accommodation on the island and we get shuttled back in to the pick up.
Obviously this whole time we do ask people where we are and where we are going but they just tell you to wait or get on a bus, seemingly the only two options on the road, and after about 2 hours sleep between us, we are too tired to question them too much. Moments later we stop, we must be at the pier now, but no we get put on another mini bus. I just don’t get it, this is a) not VIP and b) not Direct!
We’d had such a lovely bus trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap in Cambodia I thought that Thailand being a richer country would be a similar if not better experience-oh dear, how naive I was.
So we are on yet another mini bus, we get chatting to a nice Scottish guy next to me and I ask if the bus will leave soon as the boat goes at eleven?, “the boat?”, he remarks “this is for the chain ferry”. So, not only was it not a direct, VIP bus, i wasn’t even getting on a bloody boat! He later said that my face when he told me there was no boat was hilarious.
Anyhow, we got chatting to Alessio and he asked if we had anywhere booked, we said we had somewhere we were heading as we know they had availability but nothing booked, he worked in a place on the beach we’d hoped to stay on (but hadn’t found availability) and said we could check it out, no pressure.
He was a nice guy. We headed with him once on the island (via two bloody car ferries) to his place. The owner showed us the bungalow with private bathroom, it was very rustic with a cold water hosepipe for a shower and a bucket to flush the loo, no sink. But the bed was comfy and it had a mozzie net-plus it was 300 baht, which is about £6 so we thought we would go for it for a couple of nights. We dumped our stuff and headed straight to the beach (a two minute walk from our bamboo bungalow).
Bliss, after a 17 hour journey on a gazillion buses and no blooming ferry we were finally at our island break.
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