Paul and Rita's World Tour 2005 - Thailand

    


  


We travelled around Thailand in our last world tour 96/97, so this time we are just going to visit a few places we haven't been to before and use it as a launching point for travelling to Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and back to Thailand for our onward flight to Hong Kong.

After landing at Bankok airport, we travelled south to Pattaya, first by taxi to the Northern and North Eastern bus staion, and the rest of the way by bus. We were supposed to be meeting up with Paul's brother and his wife, Tony and Vron, but after failing to make contact, we found a cheapish hotel (for Pattaya, anyway) justof Beach Road in the centre of town. Met up with Tony and Vron the following day and had a very relaxing few days with them in and around Pattaya, winding down from the stresses of strains of moving out of our house and a family funeral in the week before we set off on our travels. We took some time to review our luggage and get rid of some excess, it had been such a rush up to last minute before our departure that we packedour things in about half an hour. Luckily we didn't forget anything too important.

On Monday 31/01/05, we set off from Pattaya by bus towards Chantheburi. Two buses and 5 hours later, we arrived in Chantheburi, where we planned to stay Monday night. It isn't covered by ourguide book, so we tried the tourist info office, but they were closed. We asked a friendly police man where to find a cheap hotel (using our handy phrase book, he didn't speak any English) and he escorted us to a nice little chinatown hovel (yes, I meant to puta V instead of a T) on his police motorbike. Boy did we think we had really arrived - a police escort on our first night!!!
2.10 pounds for the night and a lovely river view through the bars on our window. Shame about the mosquotos though.

Next day we got a bus upto the Cambodian border at Aranya Prathet, where we spent the night . Had our first rain since we arrived in Thailand, quite a heavy downpour for half an hour. Still, the temp stayed at 34c, so we put up with it. Tomorrow Cambodia

Cambodia