17th January 2013
Off to the Indian Consulate today, to apply for our visa's. There is a lot of form filing and waiting around, good job we have no other plans for the day.
We have a mooch around the Koasan Road on the way back to our room, (which is miles out of town, but on the rail link, it literally passes our front door!!). Koasan Road is the main tourist area of the city, loads of eateries, bars and shops. A few hours here is enough for me.
We have eight days to wait, before our visa's will be ready. We don't want to stay in Bangkok that long, it would drive us mad. Matt made the mistake when Lucy & Rhian were with us, of giving them our Thailand Lonely Planet to bring home. So we are now book-less!! To the Internet it is!!
We decide to head for the island of Ko Si Chang. Not a well know island for western tourists, but it is where the local Thia's go, because it is only an hour & a half south from Bangkok, so weekends are very busy with people escaping the city.
We get the local bus for 100 Bart each (2 quid) and then the ferry (45 minutes) for 50 Bart. We have booked in at the Ban Kunning Resort (a Resort, it is not), but it is a very nice guest house, with large rooms and patio garden.
We spend the afternoon wondering around the top end of the island, the Chinese Temple and the Buddha's footprint, which is on top of the hill. It has amazing views of the island and is well worth the climb, although it is extremely hot.
We hire a bike on day 2, well a scooter actually, that is covered in Liverpool football stickers (mother would be so proud!). It doesn't take long to do a tour of the island - 2 hours at the most and that is with photo stops. It's a good way to get our bearings though and to see what there is to do. We soon realize that we have probably done most of it already. Oh dear, that means we'll just have to spend a few days on the beach!
We have the scooter for a second day. Kunning, our land lady has put a beach mat on the bike for us and offers us beach towels. She has also upgraded our room, as we have booked in for another 4 days.
There is no Koasan Road here, there aren't any bars here, juice or other wise. It's great, we have only seen a dozen or so tourists in the few days we are here. (One couple we spoke to were from Lyme Regis, where Matt's brother-in law, Kevin is from.)
After a few days at the beach and a day wondering around the Royal Palace Gardens, which also has a view point, with lovely views over the bay, we get an email to say that our visa's are ready to collect.
On Saturday we say our farewells to Kunning, who gets her cleaning lady to take us the the ferry, free of charge, in a motorbike side cart! Another first in the travels of Matt & Netty. We must have now covered every mode of transport possible(?)
When we arrive in the tiny port of Sriracha, a man approaches us and asks where we are going. When we tell him Bangkok, he tells us that there is a mini bus going from the pier in 1 hours time. This seems to good to be true, especially as he says it will only cost 120 Bart each. We wait the hour and true to his word, we get in the minibus and are taken to Victory Square in Bangkok. We were the only people on the bus. We can only assume that the bus had brought people from Bangkok that morning and would be heading back there anyway. Brilliant service, for a change.
We find our new digs, again it is slightly our of town. We can't believe our luck this time. The room is large with a full size fridge and it even has a kettle and kitchen sink! It's brilliant! A lot of the room are actually classed as 'serviced apartments', normally done on monthly lets, but when they are not full, they sell the rooms on Agoada. It's 17.00p a night and although it's more than what we have been paying, it's still good value for money. We make the most of the facilities and go shopping for teabags, bread, cheese and red wine! Oh, the simple pleasures in life!
We collected our visa's yesterday, so we are now ready to fly to India on the 1st. All we have to do now, is to try, yet again, to sort out how to buy our train tickets. This is proving to be one of our biggest stumbling blocks of our travels so far and even with Kirstys help, it is not going to plan!!
We are planning a day out to the 'Bridge over the River Kwai' tomorrow. Will let you know how it goes.
'Thanks' once again folks, for reading my drivel. Nearly had 11,000 hits - UNBELIEVABLE!
