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Published: December 11th 2008
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Well Thailand was another fun and interesting experiance!! We started of in the South flying into Phuket....we stayed at Patong beach for a couple of nights, which is reminisent of Benidorm!!
We then took a 2 hour boat trip to Kho Phi Phi a small luxury island between Phuket and Krabi....the hotel was pretty good but the weather reminded us of home....wet and windy!! It was still warm though....
After Phi Phi we were off to Ko Racha, and the Ban Raya resort....this was really quite rural!! We arrived into a fabulous bay with a gorgeous beach and smart hotel...only to be shown to our tractor and trailer and driven past the water buffalo to the other side of the Island to our "Resort"....it was actually very nice although we had no hot water and were only allowed electricity between 6pm and 8am....They did complementary trips back to the beautiful beach we we took advantage of!!
Whilst relaxing around the pool I chatted to some of the other guests and found that everyone but us on the Island was talking about the closure of Bangkok airport....ignorance is bliss!! So we had to start to panic as our flights
to Bangkok were cancelled!!
The Hotel manager was excellent and managed to book us on a night bus from Phuket to Bangkok.....not an experiance I would recommend!! We had seats right at the front next to the TV showing a Thai Version of the Generation Game....which played most of the night!!!....Just as everyone had nodded off about 1am all the lights came on and we stopped at a huge market, service station, there were hundreds of people all eating, shopping etc...Very strange!!
So we arrived into Bangkok at 6.30 am at a Bus station god knows where!!.....After getting in a taxi we found the driver spoke almost no English and whilst my Thai was better than when we arrived I was still not fluent!...he had to call his friend to speak to me to tell him where we were staying.....he also had no idea where the hotel was other then in China town....after asking a few more people we did eventually find the hotel which was in a shopping centre!! Classy!!
The hotel was actually great, Shanghi Mansions....they even had hot water!!
We visited the Royal Palace, the reclining Budda, and took a river trip before
enjoying a well deserved cocktail at the Oriental Hotel...we stumbled upon a supermarket that sold red wine and cheese so took advantage of this and had an early night and room picnic in preparation for our three day River and Railway tour!!
Our tour guide Pang collected us from the hotel at 6.15 am!....there should have been 14 on the trip but due to the issues at the airport there were only six of us...the other four were Dutch....
Our first day was was pretty full on...first we visited the local salt fields, then the floating market, we then went on a train ride over some of the original "Death Railway", then lunch followed by long tail boat up the River Kwai Noi to our accommodation....the Jungle Rafts!! The long tail boat trip was fabulous, and the sight of the rafts as we cornered the river was amazing.
The rafts were attached to the bank close to a Mon village, not far from the Burmese boarder. The rooms (50) were pretty basic, no electricity on the whole raft, no hot water and no flushing toilet!! Sharron was most impressed that I had managed to secure such luxurious
accomodation!!!
We spent the afternoon, swinging in a hammock enjoying the peace and tranquility as the river flowwed beneath us....and then the Russians arrived!!!!.....
As night fell Kerosene lamps were lit and the whole place turned very atmospheric!! Dinner was a set menu, food just kept comming...all excellent...after dinner we went to watch a Mon dance show....probably the biggest scam in Thailand!!! It was terrible, the music (not really music more a group of men banging things!), the dancing...the most uncordinated piece of theatre you have ever seen!!!
After breakfast (Russians still in bed after drinking all the Vodka and Whisky on the rafts!!) the three elephants from the village came down to the river for their daily wash!!
Back on the long tail boat and back to the mini bus to Erawan waterfalls, 7 levels of falls 2 kilometers up....some people swam but it was far to cold for me!!After lunch we drove to Kanchanaburi and the Bridge over the River Kwai.....followed by the cemetry and the war museum.
We stayed in a hotel on an island in the middle of the River Kwai....the hotel was the most run down place we have ever
stayed...but they did have hot water and a great view from the room!!
The next moring we had a three hour drive to Ayuttaya....the once capital of Thailand and home to many temples....we had a 2 hour tuk tuk tour that started a 5pm and by 6pm it was pitch dark and the temples were closed!!
The Hotel we stayed in "The Old Palace" was OK, and the family were great they made us very welcome and we had an excellent meal with them....they also had the cheapest beer so far!!
The next moring we had to fend for ourselves and get back to Bangkok on the train....we bought THIRD CLASS tickets....can you imagine me in third class!!! It cost us 30 pence each for the 2 hour trip!! It was actually great and we met some lovely people, who wanted to know where we were from, where we had been, where we were going etc etc....
Back in Bangkok, we were back to the Shanghi Mansions for a night before trying to leave Bagkok the next day!
OK, so Bangkoko airport had been taken over by the PAD for the last 8 days...we had
already had one flight cancelled and the thought of going over land to Cambodia was not pleasant....apparently getting through the boarder involves a lot of hassle and corruption!!
Following numerous calls we had confirmation that our flight was OK!!......But we had to check in at Bangkok Airways head office...the check in desk was set up in their car park!! The immigration was in one of the corridoors and their foyer was the lounge servicing coffee and danish!! Bizare but it worked and was in fact much more efficient than any airport!!
We were then shown on to a coach and taken through the cargo entrance at the airport and straight to the plane!!!
40 mins later we landed in Cambodia, Seam Reap....and our bags were the first off the plane!!
So bye bye Thailand hello Camdodia!
Mark & Sharron
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Lynda
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Luxury Hotels
You mean to say after all that faffing about making sure all the hotels were 'Just right' and 5 star, you got some of them wrong! Shame on you. I feel so sorry for you both.............not! Glad you are still having a great time in great shrines!!