Advertisement
Published: January 23rd 2014
Edit Blog Post
We’ve been away from internet access for a while so I have some back tracking to do.
Monday 13
th January
We arrived back in Bangkok – right as a huge protest is just beginning!
Before leaving here a week ago to go to Ko Samet we reserved and paid for a room in our favourite area so we wouldn’t have to trek around looking with our big backpacks.
A few days after being on Ko Samet we began to hear rumours that there was a huge protest planned for Monday Jan 13
th – the day we’d planned to be back. The aim was to ‘shut the city down!’
We considered leaving Samet a day early and emailed Lamphu House to see if we could have our room a day early but they were fully booked.
The more we heard the more we began to wonder if we should even be going back to Bangkok at all! We got up early Sunday morning with the intention of of leaving early and resigned ourselves to the fact we’d have to find a room when we
The Skytrain
more crowded than usual as there were no taxis got there.
Well, Sunday was one of those days when nothing goes right, we’d had barely no sleep the night before as the disco nearby had decided to throw a party until 3am and the walls of our room boomed!
We sat in our usual restaurant waiting to order breakfast and after beginning to think we were invisible one of the waiters informed us they don’t begin serving food until 8am, it was only 7.30.
We chose another one, asked if they were ready to serve and were told’ ye,s sit there’ then they proceeded to sweep the floor for another 10 minutes before taking our order.
By the time we’d eventually eaten breakfast it was fast approaching 9am and we hadn’t begun to pack. All I wanted was to crash out on the beach and dip into the gentle lapping sea, not spend the next 5 or 6 hours on buses, boats more buses to get to some place we didn’t have booked in Bangkok. Bangkok does have a huge choice but did I want to trek around from place to place asking for vacant rooms? No!
So—we
didn’t, we chose to go to the beach instead and worry about tomorrow when tomorrow came.
Monday – we were up bright and early again and this time we packed our bags before going for breakfast. Got served almost instantly at 8am and were on our way by 9am!
As we left our guest house a share taxi came along, stopped and picked us up meaning instead of chartering a taxi for 200 Baht it cost us just 30 Baht each and as we were the last in I got to sit by the driver on a proper seat rather than in the back on a 6 inch plank!
We arrived at the pier and were ushered onto the boat almost instantly and within 5 minutes were setting sail.
On the mainland we went straight to the bus station and almost got the pick of the seats back to Bangkok which is always an advantage as the roads can be rough and if you get a seat over the back wheel you know about it!
From the bus station we’d originally planned to go to Siam Square on the
sky train then get a taxi to Kho San for our guest house but with the protests that was probably going to be impossible as 2 areas the taxi would need to drive through were on the target list of 6 for the protests.
Fortunately our guest house owners had emailed to say get the sky train right thru’ to the river and then get a river boat to the area. Why didn’t we think of that?
Well we got to our guesthouse no problem, thankfully and everything seemed quite normal, no sign of any trouble.
Tomorrow we plan to go to the Grand Palace.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.083s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 10; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0474s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Altering the plan
Sometimes you want to change the travel plan but it doesn't work out...but it works out. Glad all is well. Happy travels.