I arrived at the bus station one hour before my bus left.\u00a0 Actually I arrived even earlier than that as I had to buy my ticket.\u00a0 Why do people always suggest you do that?\u00a0 It’s not like I had to go through customs or have my bag checked.\u00a0 The buses also wait until the exact time to leave so that they don’t leave anyone behind so there’s no chance of them leaving early!<\/p>\n
I sat at the bus station and a local guy from Mae Hong Son chatted to me.\u00a0 He told me that his name was Unit and it transpired that this meant the same as in English.\u00a0 When I ask what people’s names mean I normally expect them to mean something like, "first born", or "child of the good" or something, but Unit…please!\u00a0 If I have children I will call the first fluid ounce and the second gram!\u00a0 When he asked my name he kept repeating it in every conceivable way other than the actual correct pronunciation.\u00a0 When a dog pottered over to us he asked if I liked dogs and I replied that I did.\u00a0 The dog wandered towards a post and then Unit said he needed to pee.\u00a0 He then got up and I presumed he was going to get on the bus so said, "Enjoy Bangkok".\u00a0 He gave me a very strange look as he walked to the toilets and I realised he was talking about himself rather than the dog.\u00a0 I’m not sure why he gave me quite such a strange look.\u00a0 Maybe he thought I had presumed that the gents toilet was some kind of tardis which transported you to Bangkok rather than having to get onto the bus.<\/p>\n
Finally my bus arrived and I got on and started to write various cards to send home whilst listening to my Ipod.\u00a0 I then looked up to see a poor Thai bus woman trying to give me a cup of water.\u00a0 I have no idea how long she was standing there.<\/p>\n
After a short while we stopped randomly and an army guy got on.\u00a0 He stared at me expectantly so I did the same back to him.\u00a0 He then wandered off and I watched as all the other passengers shower him I.D. cards.\u00a0 He came back to me and stared at me again so I shrugged my shoulders and smiled at which point he gave up and got off the bus.\u00a0 I still don’t really know what was expected of me, I guess I could have shown him my passport or something.<\/p>\n
I was the only Western person on the bus and was sat next to the passenger from hell.\u00a0 Firstly she was -the- one on the bus with the super loud ring tone acompanied by an inability to ever find her phone let alone answer it.\u00a0 This meant that you got the whole ascending ring tone for ages, whilst she ruffled through her bag sighing and then answered the phone when there was blatantly no longer anyone on the other end by shouting, "Hello, hello", for about thirty seconds before getting annoyed, muttering and burying her phone somewhere ridiculously remote so that she could repeat exactly the same farcical\u00a0 behaviour the next time it rang.\u00a0 And believe me, there was a next time, and a next time and many at really odd times throughout the night.<\/p>\n
The other lovely habit she had was not having any concept of personal space.\u00a0 This meant that throughout the night I got arms, legs and other assorted body parts, draping across me.\u00a0 At the first stop I asked the woman who worked on the bus how long we were stopping for.\u00a0 She looked puzzled, clearly only having basic English so a helpful man at the back of the bus leapt up and rushed forwards asking, "Can I help?".\u00a0 The answer was evidently a resounding No as his English turned out to be even worse than that of the woman.\u00a0 Now call me picky here (I’m not expecting Thai people to speak English) but if you volunteer yourself not only to be an English speaker but to\u00a0 be able to translate, would it not be slightly helpful if you actually had the ability to speak English?<\/p>\n
I’ve decided that I am not the most tolerant soul when I’m tired but in all fairness I don’t know too many people who tolerate seventeen hour bus journeys too well.\u00a0 If you then throw in the social etiquette here which deviates wildly from that in the U.K at times, the almost constant Thai karaoke music and a driver who insists on taking ninety degree mountain turns at about sixty in a double-decker coach, you can perhaps see why.<\/p>\n
In the evening we stopped at this place which at first I thought only had a nightclub and clothes shops.\u00a0 Although that is technically my kind of place I was really hungry.\u00a0 Eventually I found a guesthouse and confused them by asking for a sandwich.\u00a0 They laboured over it for some time until one of the buses in the road left.\u00a0 There were two and I was -fairly- sure mine was the second.\u00a0 When I looked ominously at it the guesthouse proprietor helpfully said I should have remembered the number and then I would be sure.\u00a0 Man, if only I was as clever as him, except there was no writing on the bus other than in Thai.\u00a0 To be fair if I could read and understand Thai I think I would have known precisely which bus was mine….derrr!\u00a0 Anyway I got my sandwich and my watermelon shake and got back on the bus which was left.<\/p>\n
We finally got to Bangkok at around seven thirty the following morning.\u00a0 I had a flock of drivers around me, somewhat entertainingly there was a taxi driver, a tuk-tuk driver and a motorbike driver, so I played them all off against each other to get the best price.\u00a0 As soon as I got on the tuk-tuk and we started racing through the streets I felt relaxed and at ease and remembered what I love so much about Bangkok.\u00a0 True to my word I am not hanging around here and getting stuck again.\u00a0 I’ve booked a flight to Phuket and leave for the airport at around midday.\u00a0 From there I’m hoping to explore the South a bit and go to a few of the islands for snorkelling, swimming and general R and R.<\/p>\n
Whilst I was pottering about after booking my ticket I decided to get a facial.\u00a0 One place had a deal with eight treatments for around four quid so I thought I’d give it a go.\u00a0 I’d seen people have the steam and suction thing through various windows before and asked the lady if it would hurt.\u00a0 Her reply was, "Do you want it to hurt?", which I must say eased my nerves no end.\u00a0 It didn’t hurt but I swear she did the face massage extra hard.\u00a0 I didn’t really appreciate the push the eye sockets into the brain move either.\u00a0 Prior to having the treatments I asked if there were any full face masks.\u00a0 There’s something which I thought would be weird if they covered your eyes up.\u00a0 I don’t know why, maybe it’s the control freak thing in me but at the end she did.\u00a0 I felt like a mummy except I was embalmed in cucumber smelling bandages.\u00a0 I was refraining from freaking out sooo much but I did feel a bit like I was dead.\u00a0 I really am proud of myself that I managed to resist but after she put an exfoliating pad on my face earlier and I nearly jumped out of the seat I thought it best not to.\u00a0 Needless to say this got a reply of, "Do you want this or not?", at which point I -really- wanted to say No as she asked it like she was talking about a lethal injection but I didn’t.\u00a0 Although I didn’t technically enjoy the experience I did walk out of there with silky smooth skin.\u00a0 Unfortunately she took all my eye make-up off so I then had to sit and re-do it in a local cafe whilst topping up my caffeine levels with a big old bottle of coke!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I arrived at the bus station one hour before my bus left.\u00a0 Actually I arrived even earlier than that as I had to buy my ticket.\u00a0 Why do people always suggest you do that?\u00a0 It’s not like I had to go through customs or have my bag checked.\u00a0 The buses also wait until the exact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}