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Published: November 14th 2012
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Koh Toa
first we had to get a boat from koh toa to Chumphon We left Koh Toa on 14/10 with a company called VIP bus. You couldn’t help but like the women who ran the trip, she was around 40, very smiley, new very little English and loved to joke around with the travelers for her own entertainment. Through much time working with backpackers she knew just how to panic them with select routines; including pretending there are extra charges for everything, laughing to herself as she watched the reactions and then giving back change for the price originally expected. When our bus arrived for the 7 hour journey to Bangkok and it was old, open air, looked beaten and had two long wooden benches at either side for its passengers. As it arrived everyone started to survey it questioning if it was for us, so being the prankster, of course she would pretend that this was the VIP bus, banging it on the side and laughing, at first we were pretty confident this was a joke although when we were on the bus for 30mins and she was still making the same claim the doubts started to kick in. It was actually a very pleasant mode of transport, though that claim may be
Chumphon port
where we caught vip bus different if it had actually been the night bus.
After we got to a certain point our actual bus arrived and a less jovial bus driver emerged and started screaming at us all in Thai, the sound was unpleasant high-pitched and very whiney and not very effective for conveying what he wished us to do. As it was a bus we figured it must just be go sit down, although when we did this it seemed to anger him more so maybe it wasn’t, but after sitting down for a while he stopped and started driving the bus again.
We knew we had arrived in Bangkok because the driver re-emerged to start screaming at us all to try and get us of the bus faster, the sound he made though appeared to be common amongst the males as after disembarking the bus a whole host of tuktuk drivers started making a similar noise to hurry us onto their tuktuks and stop us from working out where we were or talking to other passengers that might possibly be going the same direction. At one point a driver made himself into physical wall to stop us
communicating, either that he thought we were playing basket ball and he wanted to intercept.
In the end we worked out we were only about a kilometer from where we wanted to stay so we bypassed the tuktuk drivers and started walking. On the way to the Lamphu guesthouse, a local woman found us looking slightly lost and walked us there, restoring our faith in the locals of Bangkok!
The guest house was a couple of streets off Khao San Road the major spot for Bangkok nightlife. As our bus had dropped us off at 4:30am it was interesting to see all the hardcore partiers still going as we plodded through with backpacks. The street was lined with massage places, bars and street sellers. One of the bars proudly advertised that they do not require ID, however if they had required ID there was a man with a stall next door which could make you a fake of pretty much anything, a few I quickly spotted were the classic drivers license and passport but also a card to say you can teach.
Arriving at the guesthouse quickly had a shower and
crashed out. During the day Maceij went to the hospital and found out he definately didn’t have Dengi fever but just a lot of the symptoms, and I explored the streets around the guest house. We left early the next day.
Due to only having a two week visa the stop in Bangkok was only brief; I initially planned to revisit it at a later date but now I am not so sure. Unlike all the other places I have visited the city seemed pushy and aggressive (not meaning to generalize the population of Bangkok.) this is comparing it to Koh Toa and Malaysia where the atmosphere felt friendly and relaxed and where locals would chat and help you without only wanting to rip you off. I think I may give Bangkok another go (as it probably needs a little more than one day to feel comfortable in) but in general I’d say it makes you feel flustered and agitated and it didn’t generally seem like a happy place.
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