Thailand Ho! My Travels in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam

So, it’s been a while since I wrote the Burma visa run entry. Wow, a long while. Sorry about that.

After Burma Bob and I had a lot on our plate. We’re starting a “travel consultancy” business here in Thailand, actually we started two businesses. If I was a little more ambitious with this site I might spend a good article or two talking about how to start a business in Thailand, but alas I’m feeling a little lazy. We visited the lawyer though, three times, set up two companies - each one owning 50% of the other with each of us controling 24.5% of the rest them. Nicely setup. Costed about 55,000 baht. Not a bad deal, however we didn’t need to do the whole working visa since I’ll be back at home and Bob’s already got another 9 months on his type O (for “other") visa. We each setup a personal bank account at the Siam Commercial in Chaweng here and, once we get the final papers from the lawyers, we setup a corporate bank account (or two rather) and we’re off to the races. Exciting!

With that mission accomplished we headed out to…

This morning I got up at 4:30am. I showered and packed and drank a Red Bull.

At 5am the streets were surprisingly busy. Plenty of cabs came crawling by to ask where I was going. Lots of scooters with drunken partiers zipped by, heading home from the 13 November Escape House Party on the lake.

At 6am I went upstairs to check the laptop for any messages from Bob as he’d theoretically be picked up first. If there was a problem I know he’d have emailed me. No emails.

I went back downstairs and continued waiting. Finally at 6:30am I gave up. Pissed off but faced with a pleasant Samui sunrise I hauled my bag and myself back upstairs, dropped everything off, changed into my trunks, grabbed my iPod and went for a run along the beach.

The sunrise was indeed beautiful. Super red at first with an icy green sea at low tide. Lots of beach to run on, at least on the main part of Chaweng. The thing is that once you get to the north side of Chaweng Beach the conditions deteriorate rapidly. Garbage, mostly plastic bottles and cups…

I’ll try to be brief. I’ve been putting off writing this article for a week now because it’s a long story. I do however, want to publish the story so that anyone else searching for info about taking the bus from Koh Chang to Siem Reap, Cambodia or from Siem Reap to Bangkok knows a bit more about the situation.

Okay, maybe “nightmare” is a little strong. In the end it was just a big adventure and hey, if you’re going to Siem Reap from Thailand then you’re up for adventure anyway aren’t ya?!

Koh Chang to Siem Reap: bus and taxi

Video from our bus journey from Koh Chang to Aranyapathet. Note the psycho driver in the truck ahead of us as he narrowly misses two head-on collissions at 80km/h. Our bus driver was no better, if not worse because he had a ball-less minibus with 6 passengers and luggage.

I booked my bus trip at a little tourist agency on Koh Chang like everyone else does. Just go in and ask them about it. You…

This is my third whole day on the island and things are going well, but not without a few fits at the start.

Leaving the ferry port, heading to Koh Chang.

Arriving on the island from the Bangkok involved a 9 hour bus from Bangkok (VIP bus albiet, where leg room is plentiful and the seats hit almost 40 degrees), and a 1.5 hour ferry, putting me on dry Koh Samui territory at about 8am on Monday. Given the costs compared to flying I’m not sure I would do it exactly like that again, I mean, 900 baht for the bus ticket, 100 baht for the ferry ticket, about 400 baht together in taxi rides… it adds up! Top that off with the less than ideal night’s sleep and the 2200 baht plane ticket starts looking like a very attractive option. But meh, I digress, I need to start saving my cash more effectively and sleeping on the bus saved me a night’s hotel room, right? That’s how I’m trying to see it.

An awesome Bay of Thailand…

On the right, our mini-bus. Yes it’s more like a van, but they call it a bus. On the left you can see the sign saying that we’re half way between Bangkok and Koh Chang!I was fortunate to book a mini-bus from Bangkok to Ko Chang through the TAT (Tourist Authority of Thailand) a few days before I left Bangkok. For 600 baht you get picked up from your hotel (saves you a taxi!) between 8-9am and, after picking up the rest of the passengers, the bus heads out for Koh Chang taking about 3.5 hours to arrive at the ferry port.

Now, remember that it’s the rainy season here (it was early October when I took the bus) and Thailand has had a shit-load of rain. I experienced my first REAL flooding on this bus ride actually. Check out some of the pictures I’ve uploaded of the flooding between Bangkok and Ko Chang on my flickr site. It was pretty intense seeing so many homes and shops flooded out. Cars were submerged up to mid-way on the windshield…

The bus arrives at 8:40am tomorrow to pick me up from the hotel here. At least that’s what TAT said, but I’m finding it difficult to believe. I mean, it’s not like there’s going to be more than me to pick up, right? Okay sure, they came through for me with the visas, kind of. The other thing is that Lonely Planet said to be wary of special tour buses. They warn that some have this gig where they pick you up, stop along the way, gas you to sleep and steal your stuff. Or the other thing is that they rifle through your things by the time you arrive, grabbing anything valuable… Gotta say I haven’t stopped thinking about this all day.

Oh well, so they get me! It’ll make for an interesting entry on Thailand Ho here at least.

But yeah, theoretically I should arrive Trat by about 1pm, then I hop on the ferry which takes me over to the island of Ko Chang. Having read about it in said Lonely Planet guide, it sounds most excellent. Marc arrived there today and says it’s one of his favourite places in Thailand. He’ll be…