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Published: December 1st 2014
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Many pics at the end of the page...
So on Thursday I finally left Khanom. I felt a bit sad but on the other hand I was looking forward to experience something new. I took the night bus to Bangkok but us usually I did not sleep long or well in the bus. As always there was some water and a dinner included and there was also boss-strike weekend with my favourite game so I somehow managed to get over the night. As expected I arrived 4:30 am in Bangkok but not (as also expected) at the Southern Bus Terminal SaiTai but some station rather in the northern part of Bangkok. Well – a GPS always comes in handy…
After arriving at the station, I assembled my bicycle again and waited for the sun to rise.
The morning hours were interesting and the Bangkok traffic is always a small adventure. I had about 16 km until I arrived at my hotel at the democratic monument. Of course I was soaked with sweat but I had to wait another 2 hours until I could check in.
In the afternoon I went to a bicycle store and had a
few things repaired for a ridiculously low price. I had my left bike shoe repaired also: for only 2 EUR it was glued and sewed.
From now on I kept in touch with my friends Alex and Mo. Alex arrived during the night (again not enough sleep) and Mo came Saturday evening. We were checking around Bangkok, buying last supplies and gadgets and the train tickets to Chiang Mai.
Luckily I had asked some local bicycle shop about taking bicycles on the train and he advised us to board at a smaller station (SamSen), because otherwise they might just pile our bikes one over the other. The ride to there was quite funny for me since I am adapted to the Thai way of driving already and my friends were not and finally we arrived at SamSen station around 9 p.m. where we had to buy additional tickets for the bicycles. That took almost a full hour and so we were right in time when the train arrived.
It got a bit stressful because the cargo car was on one end of the train and our sleeping berths on the other. I had to handle my bike
inside over a train window and run back to get the bags but we all managed and after carrying all the bags through the whole train we were soaked in sweat again.
The night in the train was uneventful until one of my worst nightmares came true. I will spare you the details but it has to do with Chili, Thai-style toilets and trains :-)
It was a 15 hour ride to Chiang Mai and we booked a nice little hotel online for only 6 USD/person.
Chiang Mai seems to be very nice – like a smaller edition of Bangkok. The roads are smaller, the river is smaller, but my first impression was great. Could be a nice place to be and it had some refreshing 22° in the evening so I even wore my jacket.
We got plans for tomorrow but that will be tomorrow and on Wednesday we finally start the real tour.
I am fine, I hope you are too.
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