This is the blog/travel journal for Chris & Joanne Reilly from Glasgow, Scotland. After quitting our jobs and selling our house, we plan to travel around the globe for the next year.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Check Your Bucket

We were dropped off in a bus station somewhere in the North of Bangkok and quickly realised that the taxi and tuk-tuk drivers hadn’t changed and were up to their usual tricks of trying to get you to pay more. We eventually managed to get a tuk-tuk to take us to the nearest sky train station and made our way across the city to our hostel without any problems. We arrived about 7am and for the first time we were unable to get our room and had to go and find something to do!!

Well the shopping malls opened at 10am so we had 3 hours to kill and spent them wandering around the city, through Lumphini park watching all the oldies doing their Tai Chi and having some coffee. We then hit the MBK mall although we don’t remember this having as many floors and then the posh stores where we managed to spot the “Garnier girls” in strange outfits promoting their “white skin” range. Around one we were both shattered and went back to the hostel.


We were shown to our “twin” room which had squeaky bunk beds, a window that didn’t lock and scaffolding across half of the window as the building next door was being worked upon. We both fell asleep to the drilling and banging of the workmen through our wall and later I got locked in the bathroom as the door handle/lock wouldn’t open some place!

At night we took the sky train to the river and then the boat up towards Khao San road which is the main backpacking area. We stopped off in a little lane with lots of restaurants and had Pad Thai and a Red curry which turned out more spicy than anticipated. We strolled along past the many stalls which had set up for the evening trade of drunken farangs (westerners) and had decided to go and get a beer when we heard 2 rather distinctive voices. “Isn’t that John and Vanessa” said Chris and we looked around but couldn’t see them. Two minutes later we realised that it was definitely them (we spent Christmas in Saigon with them) the only difference being that John now had dreadlocks and Vanessa had dyed her hair blonde!! So we stood chatting with them and another couple and arranged to meet up the following night. Chris & I then sat in one of the bars on Khao San and watched the hordes of tourists stream up and down.

The following day we found a rather nice coffee place and spent some time catching up on the internet. We had decided to head out early and try and find the Southern bus terminal to book our next destination. So we took the boat and started to walk thinking that it looked about 30 minutes or so on the map. An hour and a half later we were still walking and eventually found the bus station at 8.40. This was such a waste of time since only immediate departure tickets were available and we couldn’t even get the price for our destination so we jumped into a taxi tired, hot and sticky. We met up with the other guys in Gulliver’s Traveller’s Tavern at the top of Khao San road. We quickly downed a few beers before heading to one of the strangest bars ever.

We went into a place which is a petrol station by day and is decked out with table and chairs at night. Being ever so safety conscious the tables are lit by candle light by melting the wax and sticking the candle in it. In addition to this smoking is allowed and later on you watch many people wave their ciggies in the air, all of this being carried out right next to the petrol pumps! Despite this the bar was fairly busy and the six of us all managed to get a table. The other couple Stu and Vanessa were from Oz and were a really good laugh.

Well we had several drinks and Chris and I even managed to get some rather uninspiring food and we were constantly interrupted by the hill tribe ladies in their usual garb, croaking frogs at us for the best part of the evening. Then a boy about 14 (selling sweets) came up to us and asked John and Vanessa where they from Ireland and said “Pogue Mahone” amongst various other Irish phrases, both of them were fairly impressed!! They also insisted that everyone bought some sweets of off him and being the kind souls that we are we did. Chris also managed to invite an 18 year old Swedish boy to our table after chatting to him about a certain Mr Larsson, the young guy actually said “Hello, I’m from Sweeeeeeden!” with the strangest accent I kid you not!!

As it was Stu and Tash’s last night John and Vanessa insisted that we all go and get some buckets to wash down our evening so we headed down one of the lanes and sat on some mats whilst they ordered some rum and coke. By this point I had had enough of the beer and really couldn’t manage anything else but Mr Reilly had a few sips and then another bucket was had. So we eventually staggered to a taxi at around 4’ish. The driver didn’t have a clue which BTS station we wanted to go to so he took us to a deserted one and tried to insist that we get out on this dark road with no other shops opened. He eventually took us to where we wanted to go after asking someone else where our BTS station was.






We both had a bit of a hangover the next day but Chris’s was much worse than mine and I had to do all the packing as we had to be out of the hostel (thank goodness) for 11am. After chatting to John and Vanessa the previous night we decided to do our visa run to Myanmar (Burma) and then head to Ko Pha-Ngan an island off the east coast of Thailand. So we went back to Khao San road to book the tickets, then back to the hostel and back again around 5.30pm. We spent most of our day in and out of taxi’s with nowhere to rest our weary heads.

After a quick bite of dinner we met outside the travel shop at 6.30 to be taken to 2 places, the second of which was the bus station and the bus wasn’t leaving until 9pm. So we had to wait another hour before moving. Again the bus trip was not that great sitting underneath the air conditioning unit with the driver just belting down the road and several times I went at least 2 feet in the air as he decided not to slow down going over the ramps.

We arrived at 6.30am in the border town of Ranong and even at this time the whole town stank of rotten fish. We started to walk on the instructions of Victor a Danish bar owner who remembered 10 mins later that we had to go back and check out of Thailand first. Chris and I were the only two carrying our backpacks and had to walk back but at least it wasn’t 12 o’clock and absolutely scorching. We got stamped out and were promised a taxi to and from a boat by one of the boat owners. No taxi and after 15 minutes of hearing “It’s just here” after about 10 times we decided to see if there was any other boats, nothing to be had so we had to walk for around another 5 minutes before heading onto one of those wooden boats which looks as though any more than 2 Farangs and it would sink. Fortunately it didn’t, we went to another Thai border check and then waited for 30 minutes for the tide to come in.

This had caused a traffic jam of boats as they all jostled for the best position in the middle of the river and rather than lining up all the boats were pointing towards the middle we saw one boat being moved by two English guys helping to sway it from side to side so John and Victor gave it a bash and we managed to get out of the jam. We then landed in Burma with our entrance being stamped and then it was off to the next place to have them stamped as exiting with many young men trying to get you to go with them to buy something cheap from them. We all declined and headed back to the Thai border this time managing to get the boatman to get us a taxi.


After we got our visa’s we were dumped back at the bus station only to find that our bus didn’t leave until 2pm, whereas Vanessa and John managed to get theirs right away. So Victor, Chris and I went to have breakfast/lunch in a little café and tried to wish the time away. It was a long 3 hours wait for us; having been hung-over the day before and having very little sleep on the bus.


Our “air conditioned” bus arrived and we groaned as we watched them load up the bus with huge baskets of fish!! The bus did have air in it although it stank a little of the fish but it was ancient and again the seats were more suited for 8 year old children than 2 big westerners, but I even managed to get some well deserved sleep. We then arrived in Surat Thani at 7pm and we had an offer to go with Victor to Ko Samui and stay with him before heading off the following day but this involved waiting until 11pm for the overnight ferry which took at least 5 hours so we decided to call it quits for the night and booked into the nearest hotel. We both had a good nights sleep before getting up the next morning for the bus/ferry combination to Ko Pha-Ngan.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bangkok sounds boring.

I GOT BORED

4:12 pm

 

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