Chaing Mai & Bangkok

On the 4th day we left Pai and drove back to Chaing Mai, a snap decision resulted in us splitting the group. Dean & Andreas were going to head to Laos, the rest of us decided to jump straight on a night bus for Bangkok. Despite some antics with Dean chasing us on the back of local woman's moped to the bus station (he had left his ipod in my bag) we boarded the first of what would be of 3 night journeys in a row.

6am Bangkok. We arrived pretty sleepy and rented a room for the day. Once we had rested up we headed out for some adventuring around Bangkok. Colm, Alex & myself decided to head to the cinema in the MBK. We had totally forgotten that was were all the riots were centered around and the red shirts had their main base! The area seemed pretty safe so we had a little explore on but didn't enter the compound despite being invited by a very friendly red shirt.

We rode the skytrain 2 stops up to the other end of the compound and it was a strange sight to see the city as busy as ever. Everyone was still going about their daily business, but large numbers of police were on the side of the roads and the barricades were only 50 meters away. I think the media had really blown a lot of the safety concerns out of proportion. Once you left the MBK area it was almost impossible to know there was a problem in the city.




Of course that night the general was assassinated while being interviewed by a reporter from The New York Times. So maybe they weren't totally off.




Chooo Choo night train! We arrived at the train station to find the train delayed by an hour so Irish fashion we loaded up with a few beers, KFCs (Nods to Adriano) and other snacks for what I was hoping would be a recap of the adventure I had with Ad and Ben back in July. (We got the night train and hung out the doors at 50mph, drank and sang with the train staff and fell asleep on the floor) But alas, this train was having none of that, locked doors and a train full of sleeping people deterred most antics. Never the less we made the most of the night, a few scoops, "borrowed" some coke from a crate we found and stood looking at the stars from between the walkway connecting two carriages.

6am, arrival at Chumphon train station. I had been led to believe we would find a legitimate company to bring us on a visa run, the locals hassled us onto a tuk tuk which dropped us 100meters up the road at the office of the visa run company. We should have suspected something was up here, I do remember looking at the sign & thinking that isn't the port name (the visa run is from a port in Thailand across a bay to Burma) but I was too tired to do anything about it other than take the locals word. Mistake!

The bus dropped us at a private bus station in the port town when a guy (who I think was at the train station back in Chumphon) rode up and asked us if we wanted a visa run. To make a long story short a lot of arguing and haggling ensued, we eventually went with him and got the boat to Burma. In Burma the officals scammed us for not having a crisp new $10 bill and made us pay 500 baht instead ($15) but kindly informed us we can stay in Burma for 20 days if we wanted. Thanks. On the way back the boat broke down and drifted into the weeds,



The driver got it fixed after a half hour and dropped us back to our friend who was still waiting at the port. He offered to drive us back to Chumpion for a rip off price, more haggling, walking away etc ended in us paying him to drop us for the 2pm ferry to Koh Tao.

We missed that arriving back at 2:30pm. I think the boat had actually been at 1pm anyway. We drove around for an hour attempting to rent a private longtail but giving up and conceited to getting the 11pm night ferry. Unknown to us we had actually ended up getting the boat the locals get and paying half the price so our luck was changing here.

5am arrival at Koh Tao. We headed to the accommodation I stayed in back in July, woke up the woman and then decided it was too expensive so left her slightly aggrieved at 6am. Val & myself found a cheaper place up along the beach and booked us in there, we stayed for a total for 7 minutes before deciding the other place was nicer for a difference of 50baht and went back to wait for the woman to wake up again.



7:30am we finally had a room. We traveled a distance of about 1550km between two countries over 3 days by bike, bus, train, taxi, and boat! So we went to sleep.