Final thoughts and recommendations...

The morning after we got back it was snowing, and having been back in the UK four days now I’ve nearly got used to the temperature and waking up at the right time. I’ve been looking at all the photos I took in Thailand and Cambodia, 2500 of them, and feel quite amazed at some of the things I saw and did.

The photos will be bigger than on here and there are more of them. At the moment I’m trying to fight a bad cold. Looking back at the trip, it does feel like an amazing journey where every day I experienced something new. I’m really glad I saw Cambodia and such a different way of life. I want to travel again, and will probably go along to Destinations 2006 for inspiration (2-5 Feb). It has been such an amazing experience and I want to see more of the world.

Recommendations and Advice

During our visit to Thailand and Cambodia we stayed at some great places, as well as some that weren’t so nice. I think that choosing a good guesthouse or hotel can play a large part in the enjoyment of a place, as we found out in Bangkok.

Bangkok:

I don’t recommend staying in the area Downtown of Thanon Rama IV, it’s fairly grim. Sukhumvit is a much smarter and more expensive area. We stayed at the SV Guesthouse (Tel. (0066) 22 531747) (just around the corner from the metro) which was 600 baht a night for a double room with ensuite. All the hotels in that area seem more expensive than other parts of Bangkok, but its definately worth it for the great public transport links and for a street free of rats and rubbish. Khoa San Road looks a fun place if you’re young, into hostels and willing to stay in the same place as all the other tourists. Chinatown looked another fun option, definately worth investigating.

Sukhothai:

We stayed at the Ban Thai guesthouse in New Sukhothai (Tel. (0066) 55 610163) which was the most enchanting guesthouse we came across in Thailand, and I completely recommend it to anybody. They have beautiful wooden bungalows with ensuites based in a pretty garden for 250 baht a night, and dorms in a separate building for less. There is also a lovely restaurant area which has a brilliant menu of thai food at good prices. We really enjoyed staying here.

Chiang Mai:

I don’t have anywhere to recommend for Chiang Mai, as the place we stayed was fairly basic and provided small, grotty blankets for the bed and wanted to charge extra for sheets. Despite being Western run they kept a poor dog in a cage and the staff weren’t overly friendly. However there are lots of nice looking guesthouses in Chiang Mai, so I think it would be easy to find somewhere that looked good when you get there rather than booking in advance.

Krabi:

The KR Mansion Hotel (Tel. (0066) 75 612761) was ok, but not brilliant. I booked it over the phone and they had said 300 baht a night for a double room with ensuite, but when we got there they were saying 350. They did accept 300, but I’m sure for their new price you could find a nicer place to stay. The food wasn’t great either.

Siem Reap, Cambodia:

I completely recommend The Two Dragons Guesthouse to anybody going to Siem Reap and visiting Angkor. Our room was lovely and clean with nice bedding and a hot shower. The guesthouse is Western run, with a helpful owner and friendly staff. They have a clean restaurant with lovely Thai and Khmer food at good prices. Our room was $12 a night for a double bed, air con and a hot shower ensuite. This guesthouse is popular and gets full quickly so I recommend booking in advance. Also we met our tuk tuk driver Sot’lar at the entrance when we arrived, offering to be our driver, and he was very likeable so I would highly recommend him also.

Queen Alia Int. Airport, Jordan

We arrived in Jordan in the evening and found out that we had a free transit hotel already arranged, which I was surprised about. It seemed like half the people from the flight knew about it and the rest didn’t, and like myself had already booked accomodation in Amman. We were lucky, as a lady at the hotel phoned up the hotel where I had a reservation and cancelled for me and thankfully they won’t charge my card. The hotel itself was ok, really large and included a free evening meal and breakfast. Neither were much good though!

The organisation at the airport the following morning was terrible. We arrived at 9.00am for our 11.00am flight and were pointed in the direction of a transit desk where no one was there to serve us. After a while we were moved on to a different desk where there was one woman between two lines of about fifty people, and it was so slow. As people from our flight neared the front she started calling for passengers for flights to Tunis and then New York. Eventually every time she called out New York we all screamed back London. After standing in a queue for over an hour she told us to gather round and started reading out our names. Of course with the number of people for our flight and how quiet her voice was, nobody could hear a thing. Thankfully a loud man from our flight took the cards from her and read out our names. It astounded me that after getting to the airport so early we then had to stand in a queue for an hour and a half, only for another passenger to read out our names and give us our boarding cards. With half an hour to spare we proceeded to the boarding gate.

Bangkok, Thailand

Last night we were collected from the hotel and taken to Krabi bus station, where we waited an hour before boarding a coach. We were fairly tightly packed but for our 550 baht each to go from Krabi to Bangkok I hadn’t expected much else. The toilet on board was tiny and had no light, which seems a common feature of Asian busses, so for future reference always travel with a pocket torch!

Three hours later the bus pulled in at a little place with palm trees and a ‘cafe’. We thought it was just a toilet stop, but our luggage was being taken off the coach and everyone got out. Nobody knew what was going on or why we had been dropped here, but we had to go over to a desk and write down our names for Bangkok. Eventually we managed to get out of one of the drivers that we were going on a ‘big coach’. All of a sudden there was shouting of ‘quick’, ‘Bangkok’ and ‘coach one’ but for some reason that coach wasn’t for us and we were allocated on the next one.

We found a Canadian couple to talk to and waited for about an hour, in this swamp like, coconut plantation, surrounded by bull frogs and moths the size of birds. Eventually our coach did turn up, and it was more spacious with aircon, comfy seats and blankets. I was slightly concerned and puzzeled that for such a nice coach there were no toilets on board and we had ten hours ahead of us! However as it happened the coach made three stops at various service stations for us to get out, buy food or use the toilets, so that was a relief! I just found it difficult with the lack of communication from the drivers, that we didn’t know what was going on or whether we would have to sit on the coach for the entire journey and if so I shouldn’t drink any water, and after we did stop I wondered if we would stop again. However I managed to get some sleep and it was fairly comfortable - just a bit cold!

We arrived in Bangkok at six am, despite all the delays. The difficult bit was finding a taxi driver that would use the meter to take us for a short journey to the train station. The taxi drivers in Bangkok can be such idiots, as we said Hua Lamphong station, and the driver asked where we were going after, and we said the airport this afternoon and he seemed genuinely puzzeled as to why we wanted the train station if we were going to the airport, so we walked off and had similar experiences with a few more drivers, until finding one who would use the meter and take us where we wanted to go. We did have to tell him we were going to take the train to Chiang Mai, which he seemed happy with, as if our journey had to make sense, rather than us deciding where we wanted to go. The train was slightly delayed but we’re here now, having checked in with an hour or so before our flight.

Krabi, Thailand

Our last day in Krabi and we awoke to more monsoon rain. We walked down to a restaurant for breakfast which looked fine, except for the fact that when getting to the bottom of my fruit juice I noticed a worm! I was fairly horrified and we promptly left and went somewhere else. I suppose in all likeliness I probably didn’t drink any more worms as they are heavier than water and float to the bottom and it could have just been a worm from the fruit, but either way it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

At a restaurant we knew to be fine I drank a cup of boiling water in the hope of killing anything bad followed by breakfast. After that Al suggested vodka, which wasn’t particularly nice either, but hopefully it sterilised my stomach, and I’m currently drinking lots of bottled water. So its just a case of waiting to go to the doctors when I get back and maybe taking some antibiotics. As its so hot here I just though that a glass of tropical fruit juice would be nice, but in future its just a can of coke or bottled water!

We have a coach booked overnight back to Bangkok, which arrives early tomorrow morning and then our flight back to Jordan. I’ve enjoyed Krabi, it’s a relaxing seaside town.

Krabi, West Railey, Thailand

So much for our plans this morning to get up early and take a boat to the nearby beaches. We awoke to the sound of the South’s monsoon rain. A few hours later it had passed so we walked down to the pier and waited, for ages. The guys that ran the boats said we’d have to wait for 8 to 10 people but after sitting by the river for a long time we decided to walk upstream to the famous Krabi crags. We took a pathway through the mangroves and eventually ended up at a pier opposite one of the huge limestone crags. A local guy was offering boat trips to the crag and back for 100B for the two of us, and to start with I was a bit scared of the thought of going on this tiny wooden boat, but it was only 50 meters or so in calm water, and I even enjoyed the boat ride! We were really low down in the water, and it was amazing to see these big limestone crags towering above us. We arrived on the island, which had a small sandy area and explored a cave with interesting stalagmites and stalactites.

We walked back down the Krabi river passing the pier where the longtail boats go from, and this time we were in luck as there were enough people to leave for East Railay beach. Again the sea was fairly calm, as we followed the coastline around, passing interesting looking islands on the way. It probably took about half an hour. When we arrived at East Railay the boat came as close as it could to the sand and then we had to jump!

The beaches were beautiful. I felt really excited to see turquoise blue sea. However the weather still wasn’t that great and it spend most of the afternoon being cloudy. We had food at a restaurant looking out onto the beach when we arrived and then walked across to West Railey. The beach was very crowded and more popular than the guidebook suggested but it was still good to walk on lovely white sand and look out at limestone crags in the sea.

There were lots of stalls selling various beach clothing and jewellery and I bought an interesting bracelet with shells threaded on and some rings. We walked back to the bay where longtail boats were leaving to head back to Krabi and had to wade out quite a way into the sea before climbing onto the boat! At that point it was looking fairly stormy and soon after it started to rain. The journey back was fine and we had the boat to ourselves as the owner wanted to get back. When we returned I felt really pleased that I’d managed to do the boat trips today, as normally I’d do anything to avoid going by sea. I took a travel tablet and wore seabands which worked well. I quite enjoyed the experience of being on a longtail boat in South Thailand.

Leaving Cambodia, to Bangkok, then Krabi...

I’m currently hiding in an internet cafe from what feels like a semi-monsoon. The clouds started to go dramatically dark and all of a sudden it started. Our first afternoon in Krabi.

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It’s been a long journey to get here. We left Siem Reap (Cambodia) at 6.50am in a taxi, and passed beautiful rice fields and palm trees glowing in the early morning sun. We were well on our way to the border, when in front of us was a long queue of cars. Our driver overtook them and got near the front. It was at this point we found out that the bridge was broken and there was a huge hole, where one of the metal plates had fallen in. Soon after the vehicles had caused gridlock in about three rows of cars on either side of the bridge for as far as you could see, so even if they did mend the bridge we were all blocked in!

It was really hot by this point and lots of people were trying to find shade behind cars. The dirt road covered us all in browny orange dust. Several hours passed and eventually people managed to botch up the bridge and eventually people moved their vehicles to let the other direction through. Some cars from our side tried to go across and it took a further half an hour of arguing before they decided who should go first and we were finally on our way again! I think I should be thankful that it was only five and a half hours to the border and not longer, considering what chaos the bridge was.

We passed through the border after a lot of queuing, and only just made the 1.30pm bus to Bangkok. We arrived at six and were in quite a hurry to get to the train station for 7.15pm. We must have looked confused but were very thankful when a German guy offered to translate for us and got us on the right bus to the nearest metro. From there it was another twenty minutes to Hualamphong station and we just made in time to buy food before the journey and get on the train!

I put my earplugs in and slept really well in the train. I woke about six am, and the bunks were made into seats. Soon after it got light and we started passing dramatic scenery with forests and limestone crags. From Surat Thani we got a coach to Krabi bus station, which was a further three hours, and finally a songthaw to our hotel.

It was really hot when we arrived here. After a lunch of fried noodles, veg and chicken we walked down to the river, from where the boats go to the Railey beaches. It doesn’t look to bad, and tomorrow we’re hoping to make a trip out to the beaches. Unfortunately there’s thundery showers forecast for the next day or so, and then its sunny when we go back home! I like the feel of Krabi, the atmosphere here is relaxed and quite different from other parts of Thailand.