We walked around an hour from our hostel to get our tickets at Hualamphong Station for our departure from Bangkok the day after, this is recommended to do if you take a first or second class coach. Ticket from Bangkok to Chumphon cost B510 (£10) for over a 6 hour train ride in second class. The train station gas reserved seating for monks which I thought was interesting.
Over the past few days we are starting to get the hang of getting tuk tuk drivers to leave us alone. Generally when they pull up next to you or drive alongside a shake of a head is enough to get them to move on however some will continue to shout "where you going?" after you and beep their horns following you. We only had one instance which i became annoyed by the driver for continuing to pursue us. Along our trip to the station we had drivers beep at us pretty frequently and unless they were next to us or in front we pretended we didn't hear.
Arriving in Thailand with a bad cold and struggling with the heat the walk to the station was very difficult for me without a sun hat so we decided to explore a market on our journey home, which was somewhere along Charden Krung (New Road) and Rama IV road. The first section of the market we went round seemed to mainly sell pirated DVDs, sex stuff (never expected to see in a market) and porn. Unfortunately my search for a hat failed and we headed back to our hostel.
I forgot to mention before that by around Day 3 we had learnt that there is some interesting building to see not far from anywhere, near our hostel there was Sao Ching Cha, City Hall. Our hostel was located next to temple supply shops so walking out the hostel onto the street and there were buddhas bigger than us.
As this was our last night in Bangkok we decided to explore as much within a fairly easy distance from our hostel.
We went east to see Wat Rajnadda and Loha Prasat walking next to the old city wall, seeing the Golden Mount again in the distance (beautiful when the suns starting to set, first time we saw it was lit up at night Day 1 on our exploration of the area). We then headed past the Democracy Monument (middle of a roundabout) which we had walked past previously on day 2.
Although we had avoided staying on Khao San road due to it being THE tourist street we felt we needed to visit it before we left. The street was great to visit but filled with tourists and overpriced goods- I bought a sunhat here for B250 (£5) and a bag for B100 (£2) although pound wise that's fine I know I could have got it a lot cheaper in Thailand. We got some phat thai for B30- for egg, meat was more expensive (60p) and was really good food. Everyone on this street seemed to want to sell you a tattoo. I wouldn't want to stay on this street however I enjoyed visiting it and the energy and atmosphere of the street was nice.
We then headed to Phra Sumen Fortress and sat in the park around it facing the river. Sat under a tree we saw an exercise class happening. I was still struggling with the heat and amazed anyone could do exercise in it. The park was a lovely park and it was nice to be able to watch the river.
We had planned on around Day 2 to see a night market and headed to one that was marked on the guide book on Atsadang road. However when we arrived there was very little setup, nothing more than any other street food stands near our hostel, nothing to suggest an actual market. Possibly we had arrived before it opened (we got there around 7) but there was no indication of anything else beginning to happen.
