An early
start – eating breakfast at 6.30am then outside waiting for pickup to take us
to our Bangkok bus. We got a bit concerned as the pick up still hadn’t arrived
and 8am bus departure time was getting very
near.
A tuk tuk
roared up and we got in – only to be deposited about 100m down the road! We
could have walked if we had known J
The bus was
falang-loaded! No locals at all – a foreign experience for us... The bus
stopped numerous times with one final stop before the Poi Pet border crossing
where the bus man took our tickets and red-stickered us.
Poi Pet was
the least efficient of all crossings we have done so far – kicked us off the
bus with our big packs and we walked for a fair while through mud and rain
until eventually getting through to the other side. Here we were gathered up by
a man yelling ‘red-stickers’. We followed him until he found a friend then we
carried on without him :-P He caught up and we were loaded in mini-vans...down
the road 5-10minutes then us and our packs were disgorged again. This time for lunch where we shared travel
stories with a couple from Bournemouth (another teacher!).
Then we were
separated into mini-van groups by numbers on our red stickers. Roni did a quick
swap with a solo traveller so we remained in the same vehicle! There were
numerous stops after this as we had to pile out every time the van got gas (at
least not lugging our big packs this time). We had chats with a couple of
Germans sharing our minivan to fill the time.
Sad news arrived
at this time – Bray got a text while we were on the road. His Nana passed away
this morning at 6am.
Poos.
After 11
hours on the road we arrived in Bangkok. Fortunately our minivan driver agreed
to drop us at Hua Lamphong (central train station) where we caught the
underground, connected to the BTS (skytrain) then got off a few stations too
early (sigh) before lugging our packs along Sukhimvit from Soi 24 to Soi
40....then all the way along Soi 40... We wanted to double check that we were
headed in the right direction so asked various gate men (not enough
Thai/English on either side) and various taxi drivers (rude, not enough
Engligh, refused to take us to the end of Soi 40 or just sped away).
By this time
we both had enough and Bray was holding up admirably after the crappiness of
the day so far but this was pushing it...at least it wasn’t raining on us :-P
We made it to the end of Soi 40 onto Rama IV and staggered to a 7-11 for
hydration. The helpful staff combined with a customer to point us in the right
direction – hallelujah!
Got to our
accommodation, managed to communicate with the staff there and got our room. It
had air con, and a shower...bliss.
Ventured out
for dinner (chicken and rice) across the road at a stall by Bangkok Uni then
home to bed...
