On the Road again

From the train at dawn.

Phoebe on the back of the truck Tuk-tuk we rode to Ao Nang.

Our week in Bangkok was over, so it was time to say goodbye to our comfortable room and the street we had become happily familiar with, though I think we were all pretty keen to leave the city even though it wasn't all so foreign as it was in the beginning.
Josh had one last visit to the dentist and we were very glad for this as the appointment came with a complementary drive to the train station which was about 2 hours away. We had tickets for the overnight train, a 12 hour trip through the night to Krabi, a coastal city.
We were all dreading this trip and braced ourselves for a long night of discomfort in the cheapest seats we could find. We were allocated tiny seats meant to fit two people and positioned right next to the stinky toilet. But the good thing was that the train wasn't too full so we ended up being able to spread out a bit. Even so, the tiny seats weren't enough for the girls to lie down on and so we mostly slumped over our bags on our laps. Though I was resigned to not sleeping at all as I find it very difficult to sleep anywhere except my bed sadly! I think I might have slept about 10 minutes in all, but some of the girls did alright surprisingly. The train was very noisy with all the windows and doors open to the elements. At first, we passed through the inner city where we saw many people living so harshly right next to the train tracks. There were also people having their dinner on a table in the middle of two railway lines, their children carelessly watching us shoot past just inches from their dinner.

Then we were passing miles and miles of apartments, houses and construction work. (In Bangkok almost every second street was being bulldozed down and rebuilt.) After that, we started seeing more and more trees but then the night came and we only saw lights from the towns we passed by.
At most train stations till about 11:30pm vendors were walking through the train wagons with all sorts of things in a bucket or on trays above their heads for people to buy. There was everything from soup to hairclips to chicken wings available. Sometimes the hawkers would get on at a station and stay on for a stop or two to sell things or quickly try and sell a few things before the train moved on again. At these stops we could see that the vendors lived in small shacks at the train station, living on what passengers bought from their modest stalls.

As dawn arrived we were treated to our first glimpses of the jungle. There were mountains rising up in queer shapes lavishly covered in palm trees and vines, with orange cliffs exposed on the vertical slopes. Then there were palm oil plantations that carried on field after field. We saw the indigenous cattle -the Humped Zubu tethered to stakes, each with a white bird - a cattle Egret perched on it's back.
Then it was the villages rolling in as we journeyed closer to the sea.
Josh had researched the best way to get to Ao Nang the coastal town we were staying in without getting scammed by tourist sharks, and so as we hopped off the train loaded with all our gear we tried to avoid being roped in by some very pushy people vying for our attention to get on their bus for an exorbitant price. Josh had read that there was a bus the locals used to get to Krabi from the train station but the pushy sales people were insisting that their bus was the only one. If it was up to me I would have just counted my losses and gone onto that bus, but luckily Josh stuck to his guns and we walked further down the street to where we could finally get onto the government bus. But even they tried to scam us as after the hour drive to Surat Thani they dropped us off at another bus station for the connecting bus, but again, it was designed for tourists who can pay three or four times the price.
Josh managed to convince another pushy woman at that place that we didn't want to get on their bus for that price (knowing that there was another option) and so we trudged down the road a few more blocks away dragging our heavy bags behind us.
 And this time we finally got to the right place where we paid a local fare for the two-hour bus ride to Krabi. No Aircon or wifi, but that didn't matter, we had managed not to get scammed! Although we did end up having to entertain a boisterous 6 year old boy who decided he wanted to sit with us for the entire journey and keep us from sleeping by prodding us and singing the abc.

From there we had two more stops. One, to Ao Nang which is the small town near the sea we had chosen to stay and once we had got there, unfortunately, we were dropped off to the wrong place again! (We were in one of those truck tuk-tuks.) But it wasn't the driver's fault as there were two places nearby with very similar names. Luckily our lovely host, an American woman who has been living here in Thailand for a long time, came over and picked us up.
And finally, we were where we needed to be! All in all, it had taken about 28 hours to get from Bangkok to Ao Nang. Phew! Needless to say, we went to bed early that night!

Ao Nang beach

Josh outside the little bungalow we're staying in.

There'll be another blog coming shortly about our week at Ao Nang beach. Keep a look out in the next few days.