Bangkok to Phuket

We arrived in Bangkok late Wednesday night after about 26 hours of travel time. Our flight from San Francisco to Tokyo was delayed about 2 hours, leaving us about 30 minutes for our connection in Tokyo, and seriously hampering our plans for sushi in the Tokyo airport. Fortunately, there happened to be a sushi stand right across from our gate, and so we squeezed in a couple take-out sushi rolls and walked right onto the plane. 

We spent the night at YHA Hostel near the Bangkok Airport and then got a cab into the city the next morning. Once in Bangkok, we dropped our bags at our hostel (Sivarin) and then went in search of our first Thai meal. We had a tasty breakfast/lunch of Masaman curry & Pad Thai (not very authentic, I know, but it was delicious!) at Aloha house on Samsen road, then set off in search of the Embassy of Myanmar. We had heard it could take up to 4 days to get visas for Myanmar/Burma so we decided to make it a priority. Along the way we familiarized ourselves with some of the prevalent Thai tourist scams including more than one tat-tat driver who tried to talk us into going to get our visas from somewhere other than the Embassy of Myanmar. At first we thought the tat-tat drivers were being helpful and friendly, but soon learned (unfortunately) that they all have an ulterior motive, and it is best to ignore their friendly advances.

We took the public boat down the Chao Phraya River, which runs through central Bangkok for about $ 0.50. The river is very murky, not something you'd want to fall in to. We can only imagine what lies at the bottom. There were many express boats, like the one below, which dragged their propelor several feet behind the boat.

Very basic housing crowds right up to the river bank.

Street vendors selling all sorts of unidentifyable food are everywhere; most have their small businesses set up on carts which they can pack up and push around, like the one below. We haven't tried any street food yet, but plan to as soon as our stomachs have adjusted a bit.

In addition to the Chao Phraya River, smaller canals, teaming with garbage and jumping fish, run throughout the city.

After finding the Embassy of Myanmar we discover it is closed for lunch, and so we have to wait until 1:00pm. A tuk-tuk driver tried to convince us that the embassy was closed until 2:30 and that we should go get our visas at a TAT office on the other side of town. We could even visit the "giant buddha" on the way! We are glad we didn't follow his advice. In the meantime we got our passports photocopied and had some passport photos taken. We were glad to get out of the sweltering humid heat when the embassy finally re-opened at 1:00pm. We filled out a two-page form about our work history and personal information, then submitted our passports, and got this authentic looking slip in return. The visa fee was $800 Thai Baht (about $26), and was supposed to take 3-4 business days, but we negotiated a next-day service for a nominal $8.

The following morning we walked around Bangkok while we waited to pick up our visa's at 3:30pm. We figured that we walked at least 6 or 7 kilometers in the humid heat, and were quite sweaty by the end.

We stopped by a pretty temple, and tried to go inside, but a tuk-tuk driver approached us and told us the attraction was closed for the morning. He offered to take us to see the giant buddha... only open 1 day a year (we were told this every day we were in Bangkok)! We politely declined (we were starting to get the hang of these tuk-tuk driver scams), but opted to not go into the temple anyways since for some reason there weren't any other people around... so maybe it was closed?

Next we climbed a couple hundred stairs to the top of the "golden mountain" (Wat Saket), a Buddhist temple with a great view of the city. There we bells strung all along the steps up.  

The views from the top of Wat Saket:

We read on lonelyplanet.com that the #1 place to eat in Bangkok was at the MBK Center Food Court. While this didn't initially sound all that appealing we had heard that the food courts in asia were something to be seen so we gave it a shot. The food choices were extensive, and the meal was good (nothing spectacular) but the best part was that the mall was air-condititoned! Probably the only time Dewey will ever ask if we can hang out in a mall for awhile. It was a 7-story mall, absolutely packed with everything imaginable, and with people too.

Some truly Asian cell phone paraphenalia we found in the MBK center mall:

A fish-seller. What are these? They were about 8 inches long, but didn't appear to have much meat on them.

Our hostel room in Bangkok, not bad for $9.50/night each! Although we were a bit puzzled by the "blanket" we were given (a large towel.. but not large enough for the bed).

A local market, and one of it's many feline residents:

Fish drying in an alley by the market:

I loved how the streets were littered with planted pots, and little "ponds", complete with guppies and goldfish!

We tried to find one of the suggested Thai restaurants in our lonely planet guide, but upon finding it closed we went into a very local joint next door, and ordered from a picture menu. It was fabulous, and cheap! (about $1.75 each).



Tom Yum Kung soup for lunch

 

Khao San street; a busy shopping street not far from our hostel

Our hostel in Bangkok seemed very genuine so we decided to save ourselves a step and book our bus to Phuket through the hostel. Poor choice. The next 22 hours were spent regretting that decision. It was supposed to be a 12-hour journey. We realized we were probably in for an adventure before we even boarded the bus. We were picked up by a mini-van at 5:45, then drove around Bangkok picking up a few other tourists from various hostels before being dropped off in the middle of a highway round-about and told "big bus come soon" before our mini-van driver took off.  About 20 minutes later a big bus did come, but it was not the bus we had paid for (we had opted to spend a few extra dollars on a 24-seat reclining-chair bus, rather than the regular 40 seat bus, since we were going to be spending 12-16 hours on it). It was old and uncomfortable, and not surprising, there were no locals on board.

After driving in circles around Bangkok and some unexplained waits at the side of the road, we left Bangkok a couple hours later, and tried to get some sleep. At around midnight we were woken up for a "30 minute rest" then continued on until about 6:15am when we were once again dropped off, without explanations at a travel agency in the middle of nowhere. We waited there for about an hour, where fortunately we had an adorable orange kitten to keep us entertained. 

A glamorous rest-stop bathroom

 Warning: there are a lot of kitten pictures... we were bored, and he was highly entertaining.



Our baggage guardian and entertainment during this lay-over

 This kitten was full of energy... you just had to touch him and he'd pull a couple flips in the air.

(Disclaimer: no harm was done to the cat... he pulled these maneouvers on his own)



Riding in the back of a pick-up truck during one of our transfers on the way to Phuket



We then pilled into the back of a pick-up truck and were transported to another travel agency in downtown Suratthani. We waited for another couple hours there, and were forced to pay extra to get on a bus that was going to the right town, rather than one nearby. Seriously frustrated, we got on the next bus shortly after 9am, and arrived in Phuket around 1:30, where we were hearded to another mini-van. The mini-van took us (predictably) to another TAT office where they tried to talk us into abadoning our existing hostel reservations and booking something "nicer and cheaper" through them. When no one obliged, they finally took us to Pa Tong and dropped us off near our hostel. All of this was made more frustrating by the fact that everyone was extremely rude and out to rip us off. When we got our bags back, they had clearly been rummaged through, but that was to be expected; we'd been warned this would probably happen and had our valuables in our daypacks with us.

Along the drive to Phuket we saw many rubber tree plantations.