Ko Phangan to Chiang Mai

Asia » Thailand » North-West Thailand » Chiang Mai » Doi Suthep
November 17th 2011

Published: November 18th 2011

I don't like travelling by bus. My most recent experience in England was travelling from Aylesbury to Reading for my graduation. It took three and a half hours and I could have cycled it quicker. I didn't have a bike here and plane was out of budget, so bus it was.

We checked out of coral bungalows feeling a bit like we'd been raped for money. 20 Baht for a locker, 40Baht for a shit pool table, the threat of a ridiculous price charges should we break anything, and their insistence on taking our money to see a Muay Thai fight. To top that, the travel centre at the bungalows said we couldn't book the bus the night before and that we should come back in the morning. We went back in the morning and it was fully booked. It was really fucking annoying but we had to get out of there that day. We weren't staying in the island another day.

The three of us had entered travel mode which basically means a greater sense of urgency and I tiny bit more stress. We walked into town to book the travel with a travel agent, whose sexuality was debatable, but who was welcoming and seemed honest enough to sell us a travel ticket. Ultimately, we never found him/her, instead we booked with a Thai guy who seemed so determined to get us on the ferry in the next hour, that it felt like he was on speed.

Speed being the optimum word, we got picked up in his car and he raced up and down the hill from one end of the island to the other to get us on this ferry. He got us to the ferry and joy of joys there was the Canadian with the nose piercing again this time with two new friends. And they were coming all the way to Bangkok with us.

The Ferry was adequate, lots of space to move about and a shop selling some much needed food. Kimpton had nicked my book so I played cards with the Canadians. We got off the ferry and then Thailand's ridiculous transfer system kicked in.

If everyone is either going to Bangkok or Phuket you'd think it would make sense to have two coaches waiting there ready to pick people up. What we found was a bus going to a city, the name of which I can't remember. Then three Tuktuk rides bizarrely taking us to various pot noodle stops around the city. I was perplexed and they must know it doesn't work so why there's no-one changing it is beyond me.

We got to the final one of our TukTuk pitstops. It annoyed when we got there that there was guy doing nothing except standing by the pot noodle stand telling me they were "cheap-cheap". He knows they are three times the price of anywhere else so why is he telling me a lie and why isn't he getting a more worthwhile job than selling overpriced pot noodles; he should at least get behind a wok or something. I replied to him with an air of banter: no "expensive-expensive", he didn't even smile. I hope he never sells a pot noodle.

After playing a some more cars with the Canadians, I heaved my backpack into the locker of the bus and boarded the upper deck. Kimpton and John were sitting next to each other leaving a space for me next to the Canadian girl with the nose piercing. They were definitely determined to make the situation awkward giving us both banter about when we were going to start a family together etc. We only once on a road side to get surprisingly some of the best Thai food we've experienced, maybe it was because the menu was not 30 pages long with food from every culture like we've found in most places. I chatted to the Canadian girl for the rest of the journey until I fell asleep; I really liked her energy and she was a great girl to chat to. I would have liked to have spent more time with her, but she was heading back to British Colombia in two days.

I woke up and the air conditioner had sucked all the moisture out my mouth. Normally when I wake up I'd stumble to the bathroom for a number one or two or perhaps get a bit of breakfast. In this instance, I was immediately alert to the sound of "Bangkok-Bangkok" and man in reading my bear branded tank top: "hey Singha-Singha, where you go?" I told him we were going to the train station, he gave us an extortionate price which I was pleased to bargain down to less than half. However, the place he took us to was massive pain in the arse.

He'd driven us to the tourist information office (TAT) where his mate, who presumably was paying him commission, was waiting to sell us everything in his fucking shop. He told us that the train we'd planned to get in a couple of hours was not running due to flooding and then tried to sell us a flight to Chaing Mai, accomodation in Chiang and unbelievably even travel out of Chiang Mai to Loas. If I'd told him that flying back to the UK was next on my agenda he would have wanted to charge me for him to arrange for my Dad to pick me up and take me home. He was relentless.

I really hate it when people lie to me, but just like the guy falsely told me his pot noodle was cheap this guy told us false information about the train. When we walked into the train station we found that the floods hadn't effected it at all and it was running. I hope he never sells anything in his life.

To fill the time waiting for the train I had some chicken on a skewer and sticky rice from a vendor outside and immediately needed a shit. I'm not a fan of the toilets in Marylebone or Paddington so I wasn't looking forward to this.

You know it's going to be a bad toilet situation when the women a give the five pence entrance fee to is wearing a medical face mask. There was a western toilet but no seat to sit on it, there was toilet paper but you had to buy it from the lady with a mask, there was no soap in the soap dispenser and to top it off when I was in there was a cleaning lady literally aimlessly spraying bucket loads of soapy water throughout the whole bathroom floor meaning there was a suction created beneath my flip flops. Maybe this is what Thai people are used to, but they've got to know that there is a better option it's just not fair on them.

We finally got on the train that was supposedly not running. It was comfortable and spacious, great value for money, we even got three meals throughout the journey - all for only 16pounds. It was just long, really long. An English man sitting opposite me, who looked like a cross between Hans Moleman from the Simpsons and the old bald guy from oceans eleven, told me that there was only a single track from the most part of the journey. This meant we had to wait for ages to pass a train and that we could only go at a very slow speed. This was the same distance as a journey from London to Dundee and it took sixteen hours, including bizarrely a time when we had to go backwards for a while.

We arrived in Chiang Mai in the early hours and got a TukTuk ride with some English simpletons with horrendous accents. Luckily we weren't staying in the same hostel as them. We'd eventually arrived at our hostel after 36 hours in transit.

First impressions? Friendly but weird people and not much personal space. I chatted to a German girl with glasses who had eyes pointing in different directions and an Alaskan guy who told me that he didn't fucking know what the time difference was back at his home and if he wanted to skype his parents they should just fucking wake up - I was really just trying to make polite conversation while ate one of the hostel's free bananas. Even two lads from Essex who may have seemed normal elsewhere, just felt a bit different here. John summed it up well when we walked back outside to get a burger: "they seem like a lovely bunch of losers." It all felt a bit like foreign territory.

If I was ever going to run a hostel I'd definitely go for an open plan layout. There is a lot of unnecessary clutter everywhere and it makes me feel a bit claustrophobic. The owner is very welcoming and everyone was getting drunk when we got here, I wasn't really in the mood, so I went to bed.

So we're made it to the north of Thailand. We're not by a beach, which means we can't fill our days by lounging around playing volleyball on the beach and playing in the sea. If we want to avoid the temptation of spending the day on facebook and watching peep show we're going to have to actually do things. Good news is that there is plenty on the cards. The plan so far is to do a cooking class, visit some drugged up tigers, rent mopeds and do a spot of jungle trekking. I've also just been given news that our friend Steph (a lovely Canadian with a lovely set of personalities) who we followed into the hostel in Ko Samui will be joining us for our two day Trek. Top stuff.

Ko Phangan to Chiang Mai

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