So yes there was that annoyance that we had jumped on the first bus that came along, and then a Bangkok bus was just behind, but it actually turned out that it didn't make any difference. When we arrived at the next bus station, the Bangkok bus was standing there. We got our tickets, asked how long the journey was, got told it was 12 hours, sighed very deeply, and jumped on. Actually I just pulled myself on. 37 degree heat doesn't allow for much jumping. It was just after midday.
There weren't any seats together. It was a troubling time. But after a few hours there was a toilet stop and then some woman moved so we could sit together so it was all ok. Phew. I was pleasantly surprised with the toilets. Seeing as they were in the middle of nowhere on a dusty Thai 'road'. But they seemed to be kept reasonably clean and there weren't too many flying bugs to contend with so I could easily concentrate on the hovering and not weeing on my shorts.
The next 12 hours was just taken up with the following:
- toilet/dinner stops, where everyone would quickly get off the bus, go ram some rice down their throat and then get back on again. We missed this the first time despite being pretty hungry, but were ready for the next one. Instead we bought some nice looking biscuit things from an outside stall. I think I must have Polish/Jewish survival rootings where anything goes at times of need as I didn't find them too bad, but Stephen's face was pretty funny when he tried them.
- playing squares
- listening to ipods
- the bus stopping in the middle of nowhere for the driver to go and chat to his girlfriend for 10 minutes. I'm not making this up.
- a few stops so the driver to pick up some rather underhand type stuff (and yes I do mean underhand - (private joke with my mum and dad) )
- admiring and possibly considering some fruit at one of the pit stops, until an old woman with no jaw climbed all over the table with the fruit on and the spat in a cup
- talking about favourite films/comedians - this was at my request. I needed to be entertained by then
- Stephen moaning about his lack of leg room (which I have to say was pretty minimal)
- Questioning why when it got dark, the lights kept flashing on and off. On and off. On and off.
- Oh yes and quite a bit of sleeping, but the sort that you dribble in and hope no1 sees, or the sort when you wake up and think you're paralysed due to the funny neck position you've been dozing in...
00.30am. Arrive Bangkok in a different bus station to what we expected. Obviously. We wouldn't possibly arrive somewhere that we expected would we?! Not in Thailand. But it was better. We hadn't really thought too much about the next move, but this station was closer to the airport if we had decided to just go get a flight to Chiang Mai. We retrieved our backpacks from underneath, and made our way over to the station. As you'd expect, it was pretty deserted. There were a few people asleep on the floor, or trying to sleep on the chairs. I went and had a long winded conversation with a Thai policeman who thought he could speak english, but couldn't. I managed to find out that the next bus to Chiang Mai was at 4am. So not toooo bad. He also said there was no internet. We cheated and texted a couple of people at home to just ask them to check online for any flights, but not much luck there either. For some reason flights were quite expensive, and there didn't seem to be any for the morning. So we waited. The station became incredibly hot and the mosquitoes were having a picnic. The time went by pretty quickly though, and before we knew it it was 3.30am. For some reason the station came alive at this point. There was a sudden influx of locals going about their business. The policeman came over and pointed outside and said 'Chiang Mai' so I went to investigate. It turned out that 4am was actually the time the ticket booth opened. 7am looked to be the first bus. Another thing we noticed on the way to the shop, was an internet booth...
I was surprised that I wasn't too tired at this point, but we both just wanted to get to Chiang Mai and decided to go to the airport and use Stephen's dimples to talk us on to the first flight... and that's what we did. Well, the airport bit is what we did. What we had forgotten was that it was a long wknd in Thailand. Every flight was booked up for the day. Even the dimples wouldn't have got us up there, so we returned to the bus station. Still, at least our taxi bartering skills were in use. Although Stephen's impression of me bartering sounds like Eliza Doolittle after sinking a bottle of chardonnay. I'm pretty sure I don't sound like that...
So back in the station. All the ticket desks were open now, and queues were forming. Well they don't really queue. Just sort of bundle. We got our tickets for our VIP 1st class bus (this, I had to see) and went to get some food for the next 10 hour journey on the road. Rice for breaksfast didn't seem weird seeing as we hadn't been to bed for a while now. Once again in a truly typical way, we had to rush to finish our food as the bus would be leaving really soon. The journey was similar to the last one, with a couple of pit stops and quick time food shovelling. The bus was actually nicer though. Huge amounts of leg room to stop Stephen's moaning, and the chairs went back so you pretty much felt like you were lying down. There was yet another amusing lady boy as a stewardess who brought round more funny cake things (one that looked like a bum hole - really sorry to lower the tone but I wish I took a picture of it. It looked like it had prunes in it. Haha. Brilliant). They also played Rush Hour 2, very loudly dubbed. I haven't seen it but S said it was funnier that way. The scenery was really amazing. Driving up in to mountains, with more jurassic views of the country. It's really cool.
11 hours later we arrive in Chiang Mai - HURRAY!! I had already called a guest house from my book as we didn't want to chance not having a place to stay! They reserved our room and as an added bonus told me to call when we arrived and they would come and pick us up for free. It actually said that some places do this in my book so I wasn't too suspicious of it. Stephen was. He didn't believe it would happen. But I did actually have a good feeling about Chiang Mai, and low and behold, only a 15 minute wait after my call and a van with the guest house name turned up.
As we drove through the streets I was really excited. I know we still didn't have a new project yet but everything looked really buzzy and like there was plenty to do. I realised that I hadn't really minded the couple of days it took to get from south to north. I actually quite like bus journeys, haha.
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