Chang Rai to Kanchanaburi

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Day 1

Dean rose early and set off for the bus station to secure us some tickets on a bus to Chang Mai. He returned not long after, declaring that we were leaving in 50 minutes! Eleanor was still asleep! Hurriedly dressing, packing and organising ourselves, we made it to the bus with plenty of time to spare. Not quite the worst bus in the station, we were booked on one that was the next step up. The three hour journey (every trip takes three hours, no matter the distance) was punctuated with quite a few stops along the way. Fairly scenic, the time passed relatively quickly and we arrived at Chang Mai with a plan! We were going to try to get to Pai (the Nimbin of Thailand).

With a spring in our steps, we jumped off at Chang Mai ready to find our way to Pai. Not fancying another three hours in a bus on winding roads, we thought we'd hire a car.

Plan A: A taxi delivered us to Budget, where the kindly assistant said no cars were available despite their website saying the contrary. Twenty frustrating minutes later, we caught a taxi to the airport.

Plan B: Hopefully there would be a car available there because a few agencies were located at the airport. No.

Plan C: Catch a flight to Bangkok, stay there a night and then drive to Kanchanaburi. Why? It was going to be our next stop after Pai and we needed to head south to do a visa run over the border in Burma anyway.

Plan C it was. Nok airlines had cheap, available seats on a 2pm flight to Bangkok. Never heard of them? Neither had we! It's logo is a beak. A chicken??? But they don't fly, which is rather concerning. Maybe some other type of bird? Not quite what I had imagined we'd be doing at 7am that morning. We booked a hotel near the airport and boarded the plane pretty much straight away.
Landing in Bangkok, we took a taxi to a hotel that may have seen better days but was still luxurious compared to what we have been staying in. On the 14th floor, the room was spacious and included a breakfast buffet extravaganza. The joy of it all! In the magnificently appointed bathroom, we washed a few days of grime away and then lazed around for a while before walking to the ghetto behind the hotel for dinner. Down two narrow laneways we found ourselves in an area where, once again, we were like a carnival attraction. Somehow I don't think many guests make their way out of the air-conditioned comfort to seek out $1 plates of noodles. Walking back to the hotel along Spooky Street, we spent the night in blissful, crisp, cottony heaven.

Day 2

We didn't have to check out until 12, so we made the most of our lovely surroundings. We were due to collect a hire car at 1pm from Avis, although that wasn't 100% certain. A dodgy website said cars were available, despite Avis' website declaring no cars were able to be rented. I hoped it wasn't going to be a repeat of the Budget debacle of a few days ago.

Arriving at Avis, clutching our discounted rental voucher from this car trawling website and with fingers crossed, we handed the paper over. They didn't laugh or deny the existence of a car. We were in! Kanchanaburi, here we come!

The drive along the autobahn (no visible speed limits and cars were doing whatever they were capable of, I think) was virtually incident-free. Dean managed to avoid the herds of cows, negotiated his way through the wacky u-turn system and endured the 110 second wait at red lights. Pulling over for lunch, he did manage to make contact with a man on a motorbike, however the man sped off straight away. Fearing the worst, I peered out from beneath my hands only to have Dean inform me that he only hit a giant bucket the man was carrying on his motorbike. This piece of news was hardly reassuring but I keep forgetting that in Deanworld, nothing major had happened so everything was ok. Hmmm....

The rest of the drive was collision-free and after a few wrong turns trying to follow a dodgy map to our rustic digs for the next three days, we finally found it. Run by an eccentric character (Keith Richards crossed with Jamie Oliver, Don Burke and a touch of Peter Pan), we were welcomed in a hearty manner. I didn't know what we were in for, but it was certainly going to be interesting.

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