A train journey to the border

I thought the other day that I was lucky as I had so far been lucky enough to avoid all the crap from the local tuk tuk and taxi drivers, but despite not voicing aloud my relief it would seem that it was stacking up only to hit me this morning, or at least try to.

All the internet and travel guides said that I had two options to get to the border town of Aranyaprathet, a four hour coach ride from the northern bus terminal or a five to six hour train ride from the main train station terminal in the south of Bangkok.

The hotel and their tour information office was not much more help, as they couldnt tell me which one was best, and having heard about coach scams taking forever to reach a destination I plumbed for the train, that and it was only meant to be about 48 baht which is obscenely cheap when you think that its up to a 6 hour journey.

However getting to either terminal means a tuk tuk or a taxi and as it was a bit of a way out I figured that a taxi meter was a safer bet than a tuk tuk who might try and take me to a factory or something and make me miss my train.

It should have been wise thinking, but the taxi drivers in the mid morning sun must have been suffering from sun stroke as they all suddenly thought that a tourist on the way out of town was an easy mark. The first taxi driver refused to go on such a 'short' journey, the second said he would not use his meter and instead quoted me 300 baht for the journey which was such a hopeless overcharge that to even try and haggle down to the 60 that it should be seemed futile.

The next one didn't seem to be in any urgent hurry when I said I had a train to catch and instead wanted to sidetrack me to his friends tourist stop where I could buy a nice air conditioned coach cheap-cheap but I wasnt buying it so I dug my heels in and said that I would buy it myself at the station at which point he said why bother taking a train when I could just take a taxi all the way to the border with Cambodia!

At this stage I am not sure if he was about to collapse with heat fatigue or just enjoyed wasting my time, but if for a ten minute ride in good traffic is 35 baht plus distance making around 60 baht then for a 6 hour journey in possible bad traffic and absolutley no idea if he was going a direct or indirect route would be in the hundreds of even thousands of bahts and once out of the city limites I would be hopelessly lost and at the mercy of the next taxi or tuk tuk driver.

Realising that this was all a waste of time I just did what I always ended up doing, walking away ( after telling him loudy to fuck off and threw his chums hand away as he tried to stop me from leaving ) and then walked to the end of Khao San road where there were plenty of genuine taxi drivers, plus in the night time plenty of high price massage parlour tuk tuk pimps but luckily it was too early for them to be on shift.

Taking a lift from a driver that barely spoke a word of English and relied on me showing him a map and pointing was in the end the best option and once I got off at the end I asked for directions on where to get a ticket, it was indeed 48 baht and this gave me time to check my emails at the station ( for a whopping 20 baht for 5 minutes !?! ) a half hour mini massage and then a bit to eat before standing on the platform with all the others.

There are only two trains a day that run to the border from Bankok, one at around 6am and the other at around 1pm, but only the morning train will get you to the border before it is closed for the day and you will have to spend the night in the town of Aranyaprathet which has a few options and cheap motels, hotels and B&B's.

The train journey was an experience, as it was third class which meant hard seats, only two or three small fans bolted to the ceiling and all the windows wide open as makeshift aircon, with metal grilled shutters that could be slid down into place to shield from the heat, but being metal they heat up and act like radiators pretty quickly so their effectiveness if only really to prevent you from getting sunburn while sitting down.

It was to hot to sleep, I didnt have enough reading material to last for the whole six hours, so instead I read up on a few of the bits in Siem Reap that would come in handy and bought a few of the refreshing ice chilled cans of drinks from the old ladies who travel the train hoping to sell more than 2 cans which covers the train fare and a third means they are in profit. In an effort to keep my bodily fluids up as I was sweating heavily I know for sure that I helped one lady make a profit and I am sure they all did good trade if the plastic bags of empties they left with were all sold by them.

Just when I thought that I could travel through at least one country and not get rained on, it started to rain with thunder and lightening flashing off quite near, though thankfully it was a passing shower and not a torrential monsoon or enough to threaten the train or its tracks.

I also noticed that from the dry fields outside of the train plenty of mini fires had sprung up and I was not sure if this was from the lightening or what, but the local children and farmers didnt seem too bothered by it, happily playing or walking by as small plumes of smoke were smoldering next to them.

Aranyaprathet it only 6km away from the border and as you get off the train you will be swamped by touts offering to take you to the border, but the scam here is that they all know it is already closed before the evening train arrives and what they are wanting to do is take you to see it, then suddenly apologise that it is closed but then offer to help you find accomodation in one of the overpriced and underquality guest houses where they will get their commission.

Knowing this I had already booked a cheaper and more modern alternative in the town itself and just ignored and waved them all away as I made my way on foot to the guest house.

Travelling certainly gets you over the embarrasement factor of asking people for directions or advice and as long as they look semi serious and willing to talk I am now happy to ask in almost any situation.

After I checked in, found my room to be confortable and all in order I went for a walk around the town to see what was going on and pretty soon I walked along a street where a friendly local waved me over, sitting with her friends, and then I spotted a smiling Brit who turned out to be the owner, so I thought that this was a nice enough place to hole up and have a few drinks.

It turned out that Mike who was married to a local for the last few years, had had variuos success with bars and such in the past before thinking that the quality of lifestyle suited him best in the small border town, as it was cheap, relaxed, always full of travellers passing through but never enough to swamp the town and with his first truly british pub he could make a nice home away from home for westerners with honest travel advice for both Thailand and Cambodia.

The smiling lady turned out to be one of the many Cambodians who had fled across the border to safety when the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot started their killing spree and dictatorship.

Her English was not the best but when you consider that the KR killed anyone who had an education ( they went so far as to declaring that all people wearing glasses must be educated ) the fact she can speak any at all is high praise for a life away from home.

I won't dwell on her past, as she herself is trying to get past it and seems to live only for the moment, but after witnessing the murder of her parents and older siblings, beatings, abuse and worse she managed to escape with her three younger siblings across the border to Thailand where she has spent the last twenty years doing all she can to ensure that her younger brothers and sister can have a chance of living a normal future life.

The past will always haunt them, but from speaking to both her and to Mike, the pub owner, while her story is gut wrenching and certainly tragic the worst part for me to comprehend is that it is hardly unique and similar or near identical tales can be told from most of an entire generation of late twenties to middle aged Cambodians.

I spent the remainder of the night in their company, drinking, eating and trading stories then off to play some snooker, going to see a local live rock band before I headed on back to my motel and crashed for the night.

The hotel room area has a very beautiful scenic garden area just outside the rooms but with its water feature it makes quite a bit of noise and although I didn't mind at first by the end of the night I wished that I had asked for a room further away from the waterfall feature.

My last day in Bangkok, Thailand

I guess I overdid the drink and the dvd as I did not wake up until around 11am which was just in time to get the free breakfast voucher, which for some reason they had not told me about or given me before on any of the previous days.

However when I sat down for the breakfast I was mildly dissapointd as it was so small that it was hardly worth the free voucher and it did once again remind me that although Thailand is cheap sometimes cheap is not always good as I could easily have eaten twice what I was given and still had room left over for some munchies as I went walkabouts.


Getting a bus in Bangkok is a great experience and its so cheap that anyone who wants to be frugal should learn the routes and the numbers that they need as it is only around 7 baht to get a bus into the heart of the city centre when it was more like 60 baht by going the same distance, more if you dont insist on them putting on their meters and instead ask for a fixed price.

I had half a desire to visit the floating market, but with a two hour bus ride there and the same back as it was already past midday I felt that I would not have time to get there and back in time not to miss meeting my friend M' who had texted me and arranged to meet me in MBK shopping mall around 5pm.

Whiling away the afternoon I took a stroll to find a working internet place where I did a little research on how to get across the border easily and what else where was to do in Siem Reap but both my tour book and the internet was so flooded with stuff about Ankor Wat that it was almost as if there was nothing else to do at all, which may or may not be true.

With maybe a little more than an hour I went to the bus stop to get another bus into the town centre and with good timing and better traffic the journey was little more than twenty minutes which left me plenty of time to go shopping and browse for some more dvd's and such in the mall before meeting up with M'.

It was almost a good thing that M' was delayed a little through a last minute emergency as it took my dvd seller almost an hour to get me the films that I wanted and in that time I had a bit of time to reflect upon a curious phenomenon. In my travels around the rest of the world I had noticed a few good looking locals wherever I went, and here in Thailand it was no exception, but I have to admit spending more time looking at the other female travellers and backpackers more than the Thai women.

I am not sure why but when outnumbered and surrounded by Thai women most of the female backpackers seemed to look more attractive and desireable, which is something I find very odd as normaly I would say that I go for asian and latin women, but here this clearly argues against the case.

Anyway, I met up with M' and immediately made a faux pax by trying to greet her like a friend from anywhere else, only to find that she was a very traditional woman and withdrew from my attempted greeting like I was a vampire or something. It puzzled me more so when I found out that she had travelled to other countries and so was not entirely unfamiliar with how europeans met each other, but then this isnt europe so perhaps I should have let her greet me and then responded in kind.

Together we went to a great little restaurant that she knew, that she said was one of the oldest original Thai style houses in Bangkok, and over a two course me we chatted and thought that perhaps we could go watch a show.

I had not seem much advertising for shows in my hostel or around the place, but she informed me that the large hotels are the place to go as they either host a big show themselves or have a booking desk where you can find out about where and what time shows are being performed around the rest of the city.

This seemed like a good idea and so we went to the Asia hotel to ask about their cabaret only to find that it was 600 baht for locals and 1200 baht for foreign tourists, and this double price fixing for an outside seemed so unfair to both of us that instead we gave up and watched a movie in the local cinema for a tenth of that price before saying goodnight and myself catching a bus back into Khao San road.

It was great to have met both S' and M' in one trip, but I am still a little surprised about my other Thai friends in Bangkok not making more of an effort to meet up, especially as I had known them for quite some time, longer than many of my other international friends.

Back in my hotel I crashed and went to sleep for a bit, debating on whether I would travel to Pratchin Buri for a stop over of a night or to skip there and just head on over directly into Cambodia.

My second to last day in Bangkok, Thailand

I didnt really do a blog entry for yesterday as I was trying to remain positive but it has become increasingly difficult because of my main bank.

Because they dont have any branches abroad, they are only open normal office hours UK time, they wont transfer money from a credit card and they have wiped my online details for "security reasons" I have been severly financially handicapped and limited on what I can still do.

I have been phoning them up trying to sort it out, but being kept on hold while paying premium rate from overseas has racked up a huge phone bill that is paid by direct debit from the same account and as they wont refund the charges from their error things are just getting from bad to worse.

Thus, in an effort to try and step the flow of cash from my main account and stop anything else from bouncing I called up my phone people to pay the bill by my credit card directly and then withdrawing money from the ATM also from my credit card to then bank into my HSBC account and then transfer funds over to my main account.

I thought this was a good idea and would solve the problem, at least until I get back to the UK, but I was unexpecting the hassle from the Thai banking rules and staff.

The first problem was finding a HSBC branch as although I have seen one I have not seen many and in the end I had to get a bus into the centre of the banking district and then get directions, and after being misled into trying the big shopping malls and complexes I finally spotted the one I had seen days before and so that is where I headed.

The next hurdle was that as my account is not a Thai account and HSBC is not a Thai bank in order to comply with strict regulation I have to prove where I got the thai funds from in the first place as in, proof of a letter of employment or wage slip. Of course, neither of these I had, having been withdrawing it from the ATM machines all over town in an irregular pattern so at to not seem a mark fro anyone watching but all in all I had collected over 50,000 baht and this was way too much for a single ATM transaction.

So, despite having a HSBC debit card, a HSBC credit card, my passport and going into a HSBC branch I was unable to put Thai bahts into my account. They suggested that the only way that it could be done was to change it into pound sterling at a money changers ( and pay the relevant commission charge ! ) but this was not possible from any of the other banks because none of them kept nearly £1,000 of pounds sterling in their branches.

Barely able to keep from strangling the bank clerk, but failing to prevent the anger from creeping into my voice and manner, I said that I had already been walking all over the bloody city and I need to put the money in my bank today. Their convoluted system was to send off from pound sterling from their holding branch, give it to me, convert it and then let me pay that into my account.

After almost two hours of waiting the money arrived, however I never actually got to hold it, they just had to have it on the premises long enough for me to buy it with the Thai baht's I had on me, then fill in the form saying that it was going into my bank account and then they sent the money back again.

Such insane time wasting and financial red tape is one of the very reasons that I hated being an accountant in the first place, as it is full of meaningless grud like that and if my bank cards and passport are not enough to put my own money into my own account in a branch of my own bank then what is the world coming to?

After trapsing all around the city centre, following red herrings, trying to find first a HSBC bank and then some other banks with pound sterling by the time I gave up, went back to the branch and waited the two hours for them to send for my money I had wasted all of the daytime and it was almot dark by the time I got out.

So I bought a fe dvd's from the mall nearby, went for a massage at a parour nearby before jumping back on a bus back to my hotel where I then bought some drink and sweets to quench my sugar craving and reduce my stress level even further before watching the dvd I had bought.

I was temped to using the internet but sadly the system wetn down both here and the surrounding neighbourhood so I gave up that idea also and just watched movies before crashing and going to sleep.

River views around Ayutthaya, Thailand

The river cruise was not on one of the bigger boats purely because our intimate little tour was only four people large, three tourists and our guide, so instead we all jumped in one of the long power canoes and sped off along the river, taking photos and watching the sun sink lower and lower on the horizon.

I have to give credit to the boat captain as well, as whenever we passed something of special interest he would cut the engine, or ease off the throttle if we didnt seem to be in a hurry to take a photograph, and gently lift the propellor blades out of the water plenty long enough for us to calmly cruise past and take some great photos due to the stillness of the water, before resubmerging the blades once more and powering up again.

Doing a complete loop of the centre of the city was wonderful as we got to see plenty of different sights, including local folk swimming, fishing, washing or just waving to us as we passed, and although the sun was setting which made certain shots less practical it made others far more glorious and I would not have preferred to travel another time and I always feel there is something a little extra magical about sunsets over a river or ocean view.

I was not the only one that was a little camrea happy today, and in fact one of the Czech ladies had a very nice looking powerful camera complete with several detachable lenses and once we returned to the dock and made our way up to the restaurant she told us that in only two days she had taken over 800 photos here in Bangkok.

The meal was a nice little thai meal, not at all spicey although there were dishes of spices for if anyone felt lik being brave, and the only thing that dissapointed me a little was that all the drinks, even soft drinks, were not included in the price and we had to pay for them at the end.

Ayutthaya, Thailand by night

Around 6:30 the sun was just setting and it was now that the final part of our guided tour took place, back at a couple of the stops we mae earlier in the day but then time with the buildings and structures lit by powerful lights that made things look either a eerie yellowey orange colour, or a deeper red if you caught it just right.

I have never been too happy with my cameras ability to take photos at night, even when the subject was lit by floodlights, but today as the tour guide was making a special effort and it was part of the organised trip to do so, I felt almost obliged to get out and snap away despite not having much faith in any of them coming out too good.

Thankfully however, the lights were very powerful, the time was not so late that it was pitch black and having brought along my tripod, I was able to take a few that I thougtht were passable by setting up using a timer delay to further reduce camera movement thus allowing a longer exposure shot to still be reasonably clear and not all fuzzy as hell.

This worked a few times but with the dark came a host of mosquitoes that were not out and biting during the day and before long we were all diving for the safety of the minivan, not really caring if the next place we passed was lit up like a football pitch or as dark as an underwater cave.

All in all it was a grand half day out and I am glad that I chose it as now I feel that visiting Ankor Wat is no longer a make or break part of my trip and should anything force me to skip or cut short my time in Cambodia or the far east I can still feel and say in all honesty that I saw plenty of ancient remains from the Khmer empire, even some that although it less large overall still slightly predates the main attraction by a few years.

Fed, tired and in darkness we all sat peacefully, wrapped up in our own little worlds til we arrived back at our hotel around 8:30pm, where I just had enough time to upload and sort out the photos plus do todays blog entries before I went to sleep at around 2am ... how time flies when you are sorting out photos !?!

Ayutthaya, Thailand by day

I must have been more tired than I thought as I woke up after ten and by the time I had had breakfast, sorted out myself for the day ahead the morning was already over and I had only the afternoon and evening left to occupy before I could check my mail and find out what time I should be meeting my other Thai friend C' tomorrow.

I had heard a lot of stories about the floating market at Damnoen Saduak, and so when I passed the hotels tour desk and saw that they did a day tour being a trip to the market and a trip to Ayutthaya in the same day I thought that this would be a good thing to book for tomorrow, however when I asked about it the clerk was a little hesitant to book for tomorrow as they were still taking trips for this afternoon and as I was travelling single they might not be able to book a trip solely for me.

Debating to just walk away or not I asked what trips they were still taking for today only to find it was the same trip I had asked about except without the floating market, which was only an hours shopping trip anyway and it took longer to get there or get back than I would be spending there, so although I still wanted to go I thought I could split it up and go myself another time to the market.

Ayutthaya is just north of Bangkok and was a place of worship and former capital of Siam before being beseiged, looted and finally burned by the Bermese a few hundred years ago, never really recovering and instead became a sort of abandoned shrine of the past but with plenty of architecture and buildings that are of the Khmer origin.

In fact it is like a very mini Ankor Wat, which does not come as a surprise once I found out that indeed it was the same race of people who built them both and it was only through the later intervention of the French occupation and final shifted of the national borders which meant that Ankor Wat itself is not still inside Thailand.

Unlike the gleaming renovated red, blue and gold of the big temples in modern Bangkok this area seems far older, as it is full of plane stone sculptures, large open brick faced temples and trees growing up all through and around the courtyard, making it look vastly more naturally beautiful to my eyes.

When the Burmese ransacked the city they did not leave much standing in tact, but what to my mind was far worse was when modern day trophy hunters came and decapitated most of the buddha statues, selling off the heads to wealthy collectors or for general sale in blackmarket auctions to the highest bidder. Such was its fate that now it is foridden to enter beyond the outer walls after dark, despite much of the taller structures being lit by colourful floodlights between the dusk hours of 7pm to 9pm.

Thus, despite not including the floating market, this trip appealed very much to me and so for 1,500 baht I eagerly signed up and was not a moment too soon as my air conditioned minivan arrived to collect me no more than five minutes later before meeting up with two sweet Czech ladies who were just on a minor holiday together away from their hunbands and kids who currently were living and working in Shanghai.

The trip out to Ayutthaya was around an little over an hour and I was very glad to see that our guide did not try and take us to any factory or market place en route to the old city, but instead just let us talk between ourselves for the most part and then every once in awhile he would turn round and drop a little more history and culture into the conversation.

What was even more of a relief was that despite there being plenty of modern Bangkok style temples in the area that they could have tried to send up to, he listened to the fact that all of us were all 'templed out' and were only interested in the oldest ruined areas of the city and it was these that he took us to and gave only once did he rush us from one to the next before allowing us to settle in and set out own time schedule of how long each stop would last.

Just when I was beginning to get a little peckish I found out that we were about to take an hour long boat ride all around the ring of rivers, which pretty much made an island out of central Ayutthaya, and that immediately afterwards we would be having lunch overlooking the riverbanks.