After the great time we had in Chiang Mai, Phuket was a more subdued way to finish the trip. It rained quite a bit (unsurprisingly) and the hotel I’d booked was gorgeous and right near the night market, but also right across the road from a bar featuring live music… until midnight every night.
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The night train to Chiang Mai was pretty uneventful – hard beds and smelly loos, but nowhere near as difficult as the last night train I was on (the Sofia-Istanbul Express). We arrived in CM not too far from the scheduled arrival time and headed off to leave our bags at the hotel, the Movenpick right near the Night Market area.
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This trip to Thailand is kind of an accidental one. You remember how we were in Vietnam earlier in the year? We’d actually booked Thailand for that time but postponed it when Vietnam opened up, and so now we are in the land of smiles.
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Train to Kanchanaburi
Next after Bangkok, we headed out to the countryside (well, it’s all relative) to Kanchanaburi, the home of the Bridge over the River Kwai. We decided that to do it properly, we should take the train, and so we hopped onto the slow 3rd class passenger train (no aircon) at Bangkok Thonburi station (otherwise known as Bangkok Noi – small).
The station took R aback somewhat, as he was getting used to Bangkok’s flashiness, and Noi was certainly not that. The train was even less flashy, with hard seats and the occasional fan and open window providing the “aircon”.
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After the quiet of Laos, Bangkok was a bit of a shock!
We arrived in the middle of rush hour (well, hours) so it took us over an hour to get from the airport to the hotel, The Matria, a newish place off Sukhumvit. After checking in, we went for a wander of the streets to get acclimatised to Bangkok: traffic, traffic and traffic!
Our street, Soi 18, has about 6 massage places, at least two laundries, three or four other hotels and restaurants, and at least three 7/11s. Plus a goodly number of street vendors selling juices, meat-onna-stick, soup etc up near the Sukhumvit intersection, depending on the day. This makes for a great gauntlet to run when wandering out on excursions — everything from “Massage?” to “Tuk tuk?”
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L and I flew with Bangkok Air down to Phuket to spend a couple of days relaxing before heading back home to go back to work.
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The train station at Chiang Mai isn’t too hard to navigate (and has platforms long enough for the train!) so we found it easy to find our transfers to the hotel. We were staying at the People Place Building 2, which is near the night markets, but quite a walk to the old town and the main drag.
Leaving the Chiang Mai train station
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Leaving Kuchanaburi, we headed to Ayutthaya to spend the day before catching the night train to Chiang Mai. We stopped into a grocery store for obligatory Thai coffee (espresso and sweetened condensed milk poured over a few cups of ice, then sipped over the next few hours) and snacks for the train.
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Leaving Bangkok, we concentrated on the outskirts for a while, visiting a couple of different markets before heading up to Kanchanaburi, where we stayed for a couple of days.
Our first stop was the Railway Markets, where we fortified ourselves with Thai coffee before heading into the markets.
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After way too long without international travel, my itchy feet prompted me to book another food tour with Intrepid, this time to Thailand on the Real Food Adventure.
I flew out of Perth far too early on the first day of school holidays, not terribly well assisted by attending a wine tasting event the night before. Thankfully, all went smoothly, and even though Perth Airport is undergoing renovations and the Customs and Passport Control people are now called Border Force (replete with new uniforms), I managed to bumble my way through. The flight was a bit bumpy, but we landed in BKK without incident, the only danger being the length of time we were unable to use the bathrooms because of turbulence!
The long queue at the BKK taxi rank.
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Two Weeks Away 