Lee n Tan

Up reasonably early……9am! We don’t go to sleep until after midnight. We decided today to take the cable car up to Khao Wang which has King Mongkut’s palace sitting on top called ‘Phra Nakhan Khiri (Holly City Hill). The views were amazing they took in the whole city. The grounds were just as breathtaking, the hill was covered with very very old, gnarled & twisted white Frangipani trees and numerous buildings including, wats, chedis and gazebos. It is said in the guide books that this town is not for tourists but we think that this is the best tourist site we have visited so far.

We dropped off the scooter, checked out and got a taxi to the bus stop. We were only there a couple of minutes and a white mini van pulled up and said he could take us. What a quick trip, what was supposed to take 40 minutes took us about half that time. He was just flying, weaving in and out of the traffic. He slowed down behind a police car but then got restless and just flew past them anyway. I don’t think speed limits are enforced in Thailand!!! (made a movie of the quick trip)

We have now arrived in Cha-am ‘the beach’ a favoured place for provincial Thai families to get away. We have checked into ??? (its only in Thai) just across the road from the beach. No beach views we are actually in a box, literally – no windows, no vents just a box with aircon – luckily – and a very small bathroom that you have to manoeuvre around to shut the door!!

First item on the agenda, change into our togs and hit the beach!! When you step onto the sand there are rows and rows of umbrellas all overlapping (so no sunlight can get through), underneath these are 2 rows of about 8 deckchairs around small tables. Thai families are dotted everywhere, eating from the many people walking around selling Thai fishcakes, deep fried calamari, fried chicken, crabs, prawns, fruit, sweets, you name it you can get it.

After a swim we hired a couple of chairs and sat back to relax reading our books. Lee went over to the 7/11 and bought some Sang Som, Soda & Coke and we had a couple of nibbles. You just pull up a chair and everything is brought to you…..what a life!!

After a hard day on the beach we went back to our box to freshen up and sleep (not planned). We had dinner at a little Thai joint on the esplanade. There is no way these eateries would be allowed in Oz but the food they produce is amazing.

Slept in still catching up on lost sleep from the bus trip. Went on the hunt for somewhere to hire some scooters, not being a tourist town, this proved a little difficult. We eventually found a place but I think what we hired was actually a bike that had been traded in as it was a Honda Dealership. We only ended up hiring one so the day should be interesting!!!!

First stop was a cave sanctuary called ‘Khao Luang’, there where monkeys everywhere. Ken greeted us and ended up being our guide around the caves, he said the monkeys were friendly monkeys (we didn’t believe him). When a car pulls in to park they actually site 3 foot long stuffed toy crocodiles on the roof of the cars so the monkeys don’t climb all over them, very innovative!!

The cave has 5 chambers, the 1st and largest has an opening in the roof so the suns rays shone down on all the Buddha images. Ken said there are 410 Buddha statues in the cave but only about 10 have their original heads, he says many people come in and chop the heads off and sell them on the black market. some of the original Buddha’s were 400 years old!! Older than Oz. One of the other chambers housed a shrine that the local women come to, to pray to become pregnant if they are having issues. They place cars, trucks for a boy and dolls etc for a girl.

We hooned around the city after this just checking out the scenery. We stopped for lunch, which I think could possibly the tastiest Thai yet and luckily missed a huge downpour. It took us a while after lunch to find the bus stop to take us to Cha-am (our next destination). In the process we stumbled upon the nigh market (which was just getting set up) and had our first serve of fishcakes for the trip, they were delicious. We ended up back there for dinner and ordered another serve.

We arrived in Bangkok at 5am. The road, as we neared the city just got busier and busier with utes fully loaded with goods for markets and also people heading to work (in the back of the utes). The bus station was another story that was just manic – people, taxi’s, tuk-tuk’s, buses all going every which way and every one of them honking horns, yelling etc.

The actual trip was quite good – well I thought it was, Lee didn’t sleep very well he ended up reading his book for the majority of the trip. We were given a styrofoam container not long into our trip filled with rice and a spicy sauce (something we didn’t need as we were so full). Shortly after our little bus boy (literally, he was a very small Thai man dressed in a very smart uniform) delivered bottles of water, after that some fruit juice then just after that another styrofoam box with sweet treats (chocolate etc). We definitely would not be going hungry!!

The lights were turned off about 20 minutes after he had made his final delivery and they played a movie on the TV, the only problem was it was in Thai but it was hilarious. It was about this baby that was born deformed and was literally thrown on the trash heap, you thought he was dead but then he opened his eyes!!! He grew up and started scaring all the town folk. The story jumped from him scaring everyone to the town folk sitting in the temple with the head monk re-living their stories of this creature and wanting him to believe them. The boy was Thai but had a large head, ghastly teeth, wide reddish eyes and white (powdered) skin. There was also a homeless crazy woman that made an appearance quite regularly as well. The story ended with a twist, they had a showdown with the creature and you found out that the homeless crazy woman was the mum and the father was the head monk. All that and not one word of English.

We hadn’t discussed any plans of where to go and what to do once we hit Bangkok so we took 5 and had a look through the LP (Lonely Planet). I had some idea of where I wanted to go so we went to the info booth to find out where to find the train station to take us down south.

About 30 minutes later we were in Bangkok train station trying to work out which booth to buy the ticket from (everything is in Thai). I found a very helpful info girl who sent me in the right direction. Another hurdle overcome we now had a ticket to Phetchaburi, 123km south of Bangkok, leaving at 8.05am. We had a bit of time to kill, so we pulled up some floor and sat back and read our books and I napped a little.

We went out onto the platform to wait for the train, it was very interesting watching people. There was this one white guy that looked very out of place he kept walking up and down the platform, smoking heaps of cigarettes and generally looking very agitated. He kept us entertained. The train was late so this made things very confusing. Trains arrived at our our platform and left again before our train had even arrived. So we all thought when one arrived that it was ours, then people in front found it was going north and to try and find out info was difficult because if the staff spoke any English it was not very good but we made it in the end.

I don’t think Phetchaburi isn’t a regular stop (or they forgot about us) as we were let off about 50m from the platform so we had to jump off the train. This proved quite difficult with a 16kg pack on your back!!

We grabbed a taxi and he dropped us in the middle of town at the most popular back packer place. We used their internet to find somewhere to stay. We ended up at Khao Wang Hotel just at the foot of a large hill funnily enough called Khao Wang. The hotel reminded me of a hospital as the hallways were really wide. We settled into our room had showers after 16+ hours of travel then slept for a few hours.

We had dinner at a locals joint just down the road and the food was fantastic, very basic but good! Boiled Chicken, Sweet Pork and Crispy Pork all with rice.

Said goodbye to Tony & Sarah this morning, they are off on a road bike trip for a few days. Sarah is getting a loan of some leathers from the guy they are hiring the bike from so she was a picture of style this morning in her Sarong, hiking boots and full face helmet!!!

We had our last breakfast at Da’s Bakery Home. She gave us a little present, a beautiful wooden bookmark with flowers and Chiang Mai painted on it and some incense, must be for being such good customers (I think we only missed one day).

Went for a wander and found an internet cafe to burn some photos for Tai of the girls yesterday then across the road we had a 1hr foot massage. It was wonderful especially being as though it was in air-con as it is bloody hot today!!

We are now sitting in the Queen Victoria Inn having a bit to eat and drink, trying to fill in some time before Tai comes to pick us up to take us to the bus station. Its the only place we could think of that has air-con. Before we went back to the guest house to wait for Tai we made one last stop at Da’s and stocked up on some treats for our bus ride tonight, Carrot Cake, Banana Cake & a Brownie.

Tai and Kong picked us up early, about 4.30pm. They took us to a different shopping centre for a bit to eat (we had some food at the pub so not really hungry but she made sure we wouldn’t go hungry on our trip). The Thai people are quite blunt but in no way are they trying to be offensive or hurt your feelings. Kong made a comment about the seats on the bus and said they were very comfortable for ‘Thai people’ then gave a little laugh. Lee smacked his butt and Kong laughed a bit more!!

They dropped us off at the bus station and Tai made sure we found the correct bus and waited until we had boarded (around 8pm) before her and Kong left. We gave them some money to go towards the girls dancing – much to Tai’s annoyance.

Now its a 9 hour bus ride to Bangkok. Should be ….. hell!!

Lee fixed up his bike a little before dropping it off. Mr Beer just checked that we had not broken any lights and looked it over for any major dents then let us go. Tai turned up early so we missed breakfast. Plans have changed, Ploy (the eldest of the twins) has to dance at Central Airport Plaza so the BBQ and market are out the window. Kong and Tai picked us up then they took us back to their unit, they live on the Army base in government housing.

Lee set up Skype for them while Tai and I sat on the floor going through photo albums. We left there and went and picked up Ploy and Pim from their dancing teachers house/studio. We arrived at the shopping centre at about 12.30pm and the show finished about 5pm.

After the concert we shouted the family to a restaurant called ‘Shabushi’ it is a Japanese style all you can eat hot pot restaurant. It was like a sushi train but on the train as well as sushi was everything to throw in your hotpot e.g. raw chicken, beef, prawns, fresh vegies, dumplings etc. You choose 2 broths from Chicken, clear and tom yum. The broth sits in a big pot on an induction hob in the middle of the table and you tip all the food in until its cooked, then away you go. Kong loved it.

On the way home we got stuck in a traffic jam. The police had stopped all the traffic on the main road to let – we think – the Prince out of where he was. They dropped us off at about 8pm and we had a lie down then went out with Tony and Sarah to Sunday Walking Street. They had Quesadillas at the Mexican, we were too full to eat anything. We went back to the guest house and played 3 games of shithead before hitting the hay. I wound up with the title of ‘shithead’ (thanks to my loving husband) until we hopefully meet up with in Vietnam.