Shane's Trip Journal

Today is April 7 and I am in the north of Thailand, Chiang Mai. It has been a interesting week, seeming busy with something almost every day and it started with transportation trouble. I was scheduled by bus April 1 to Bangkok leaving at 4pm. When I arrived at the bus stop I was told that the bus was delayed. It turns out the bus was delayed by about 5 hours and when it arrived it had a flat. After an hour of discussion the bus staff said they would not be able to fix the flat until the next day but the bus would try to leave around 10am the next morning. There were 35-40 people waiting for the bus, so the staff said they could arrange transportation back to Krabi where we could get a guesthouse for the night and wait for the bus to be fixed. At this point several passengers were upset with the whole situation but I just decided to chalk it up as another interesting experience on my journey. Some of the passengers decided to stay at the bus stop (I stayed because the bus stop was free accommodation it was a pleasant night), and some went to the guesthouse. The next morning around 10am we were told that the bus was going to be fixed but it would probably not go to Bangkok because several of the roads had been washed out. Apparently when they told the people at the guesthouse, all the passengers asked for a refund and the staff ended up calling police stations across the peninsula to see if there were any routes that were safe enough to take back to Bangkok. Apparently there was only one route left that would add an extra couple of hours to the trip but finally the flat was fixed and we were on the way. By this time about 15 of the passengers at the guesthouse had bailed out on the bus and went in different directions. I understand there was a few seats on a plane but the prices were inflated because of all the bad weather and people were leaving in droves to go north.