Bangkok 2
Trip Start
Aug 21, 2007
1
14
Trip End
Oct 04, 2007
Bangkok,
Thailand
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The boat trip from Ko Tao to Chumporn was not too pleasant. It started to rain quite heavily just before we got on, and we felt quite sorry for the disembarking passengers as they were arriving to worse weather than we had had during the past eight days.
The journey took about three hours and was extremely choppy. There was a terrible film showing, something with desert and zombies and bats and outer space. There was no sound, just Thai subtitles, and it really wasn't worth the effort.
When we arrived in Chumporn there was a bus waiting to take us to the bus station. Then we had a wait of a couple of hours until our overnight VIP bus arrived. We wandered around looking for somewhere nice to eat and ended up having a green chicken curry with a fried egg at a small plastic table restaurant.
When the bus arrived at 9 pm it was already half full, but we managed to get a couple of seats together and settled down for the 8 hour ride. I had just got off to sleep at about 11 when we were woken up by the bus driver telling us we were stopping for 30 minutes and it was our dinner time. We didn't have anything because the food and drink was exorbitantly priced. Perhaps the drivers got it cheaper, otherwise I don't think they would stop there.
Anyway, we continued our journey and arrived in Bangkok at about 4.30 am. There was a swarm of taxi drivers offering to drive us to the Khao San Road for 100 baht, but we were suspicious at their isolation tactics, trying to get people on one side and hustle them off. We discovered that we were only 200 yards from the end of the street and walked instead.
We got there just before 5 and were able to check into a hotel at 5 o'clock. That was the main incentive for going to a hotel in that part of town, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to check in until about midday.
We decided to treat ourselves to a room with a hot shower, and then crashed for a couple of hours' sleep.
We had a belated breakfast of fried rice and then got into a bus to the Siam Square shopping area. We have spent the last couple of hours browsing the record stores, bought a couple of Thai CDs for a souvenir, and have just managed to find possibly the only free Internet cafe in Bangkok, if not the whole of Thailand.
Well, that is just about it for this travelogue. We will be heading back to Khao San soon for food and an early night in order to catch our early flight out tomorrow. So this is me signing off for another year.
See you all soon.
