Another border crossing

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We had heard that the travel from Siem Reap to the border was a nightmare, the road was unsealed and bumpy as bumpy and the whole journey had taken some people about 15 hours to get to Bangkok (total trip only about 450km!). We arranged with a British couple from our hotel to share a taxi to the Cambodia/Thailand border to make it cheaper, this part of the journey took us about 3 hours and was quite a rough ride as the driver was going reasonably quick over dodgy roads but we made it eventually.

It took us around an hour to get over the border and then we needed to catch a tuk-tuk to the bus station - all four of us with four massive backpacks piled on to one little tuk-tuk to save a couple of dollars. We jumped on a bus from the station for the 5 hour ride through to Bangkok which was uneventful, so the whole trip from start to finish took us around 10 hours by the time we got to our accommodation, not too bad all things considered.

The following day we decided to hire a tuk-tuk and we agreed to pay him a reasonable fare so we didn't have to get taken around all of the shops he receives a commission from unfortunately he talked us into letting him take us to a travel agency, where he received a voucher for 5litres of petrol if we talked to them for about 10mins, we obliged and he got his free petrol so we went off to see a couple of wats with rather large buddhas. After this we had to go and visit a tailor to get him another petrol voucher we were there for quite a while and were almost talked into purchasing when we decided not to purchase a suit each on the spur of the moment. After this we were off to the Golden Mount for a hike up some stairs and a good 360 degree view of Bangkok. By this stage we just wanted to get away from the tuk-tuk man but he said if we went to one more tailor that we would get the whole ride for free so we went along with it and were only in there for about 5 mins but got his voucher so we were all happy.

Almost every single Thai person we saw in Bangkok was wearing a yellow t-shirt, we finally found out it signified "long live the king", as it happened to be the 60 year anniversary of the kings accession to the throne so there was a big party and we were treated to an awesome fireworks display from our hotel window. The whole city was basically shut down for 4 days because there was royalty from all over the world there and security and roads were pretty tightly controlled.

Our next destination was Chiang Mai and we wanted to catch an overnight train up there but unfortunately the trains weren't running due to flooding so we had to either pay about $400 and fly or catch an overnight (12 hour) bus and pay about $8 so we took the bus option, it was a very long trip and do not want to do it again in a hurry, the bus was absolutely chocka full and we were pretty cramped and uncomfortable, we expected to be dropped off in the middle of Chiang Mai but they stopped at a random petrol station about 10km away from the city at 6am, where there were (conveniently) several minivans from guest houses wanting to take you to their destination, we piled in but declined their accommodation and wandered for about 20mins before finding something open and inviting

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