AnneMarie and Andrew

Annemarie and Andrew – Trekking Asia

Nong Khai to Manila


Posted on Feb 7, 2014

The train left Nong Khai at 18:15. We had arrived at the station early and spent almost an hour sitting in the carriage. Each carriage sleeps about 36, but for most of the time there was only about 6 other people in the carriage. Lucky us we were thinking, a nice peaceful journey back to Bangkok. Only one thing disturbed us as we sat waiting to depart and that was an overwhelming stench of super strong pee. Someone had been to the toilet and left the door open just a crack, that was enough for the truly horrible smell to make its way down the carriage. Minutes before the train was due to leave a large group of Japanese tourists appeared on the platform, we could hear them through the sealed window. They personified chaos and confusion. We immediately had a gut feeling they were going to be in our carriage and sure enough they made their way down the platform towards us. The noise they made when they entered the carriage was deafening, they talk at about the same volume we shout at. The kids just ran riot, they climbed on every surface, swung on everything they could, pulled every curtain near them, jumped on the seats and ran around. And shouted too! Great! Luckily they went to sleep after a couple of hours and were no more trouble. Unfortunately, yet again neither of us slept properly and we arrived in Bangkok at 06:30 feeling tired, sweaty and sticky (spending the day sightseeing then taking the overnight train without having a shower is a recipe for bad smells). Getting to the hotel was easy, the MRT links the train station with the Skytrain in Sukhumvit. We had booked a hotel about a 1 minute walk from the MRT station. Unfortunately the road around the station had been blocked by protestors as had the walkways over the road. This made the route slightly longer to the hotel, maybe 2 minutes instead of 1. At 7am there were very few people around anyway so wandering through the protest area with huge rucksacks wasn’t an issue. The hotel told us we couldn’t have the room until 2pm, so with everywhere still closed and lack of sleep kicking in we just sat on the sofa in reception. Annemarie started to doze off and I sat reading the news on my phone. After 45 minutes either the receptionist felt sorry for us, or the sight and smell repulsed her and she gave us a room. The catch was the room was at the front of the hotel, in the direction of the protestors....

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Nong Khai


Posted on Feb 5, 2014

Our stay in Nong Khai wasn’t much to write home about and can be summed up pretty quickly. The first day we slept until 2pm then decided not to go to Laos. We walked to the banks of the Mekong river and looked over at Laos. Then went to find somewhere to eat which took ages. By then it was 8pm and we had a 45 min walk back to the hotel. The next day we walked to the train station, booked the train ticket, walked back to the hotel and booked the flight to Manila and an overnight stop in Bangkok. We then walked to the riverside again and found a cafe filled with Europeans. The food was expensive but good. Then in the full heat of mid afternoon when the mercury was showing 37 degrees we walked to a park. It was boiling and the heat was really taking its toll, we were walking very slowly. When we finally reached the park we found it abandoned. The paths had been ripped up, the lakes half empty and stagnant and no flowers or bushes in sight, just a few trees remained. We then walked back to the hotel to shower and rest before going out to eat. That night we decided to try and find where the locals ate. Wikitravel gave a rough location but that would mean about an hour walk from the hotel, so we headed for the expat area (in Thailand there are many older European men with young Thai women, but in Nong Khai almost every European guy was with a Thai woman, so when I say expat I usually mean old white man with young Thai woman), but found it full of tacky bars or horrible looking restaurants. Nothing took our fancy so we kept on walking heading for the local food places. I say places because I’m not sure of the best word to describe them; food is usually cooked inside but all the tables are on the street. We found one and sat down. The meal was about the same as usual, a reasonable taste, filling and cost about 80p (we take our own water as it’s far cheaper). By the time we reached our final day we were determined to see something of Nong Khai. Our first two days had resulted in us seeing nothing of interest. The top thing to do in Nong Khai is to visit a sculpture park, filled with huge sculptures created by a guy who was kicked out of Laos for doing the same there. The sculptures are huge and very interesting. They offer an...

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Kanchanaburi to Nong Khai


Posted on Feb 5, 2014

Four days in Kanchanaburi had given us enough time to see everything we thought was worth bothering with, it was time to leave. We had decided that it was time to leave Thailand and move on. When we had roughly planned the route this trip would take we had planned on visiting Laos after Thailand. Then after a few weeks in Laos we would travel back into Thailand to Bangkok in order to fly to Nepal. So off to Laos we went. The easiest route for us to take would be to take the train to Bangkok then catch the overnight train to Nong Khai which is on the Thai side of the Thai-Laos border. There is a large border crossing in Nong Khai where we can then get a bus or taxi into Vientiane. The train was due to leave Kanchanaburi at 7:15am, so we were up and out of the hotel just after sunrise. Unfortunately, the train was 30 minutes late (almost all trains in Thailand run late) which was annoying as I could have had a little more sleep. But we were able to eat our breakfast on the platform whilst we waited. A few days earlier we had discovered the 7/11 stores (small convenience stores) which are everywhere, sold the small UK breakfast cereal boxes. I had the Frosties and Annemarie had some chocolate cereal by Nestlé. (This became our budget breakfast in Thailand at 20p per box it was a bargain). The carriage was very dusty because we had picked third class, which has no air con, so the windows were wide open. The air is thick with dust from the soil been turned and also lots of ash from the constant burning of trees. We wiped the seats with wet wipes and the bright white cloth went black. We arrived in Bangkok around 11am and the temperature had already reached 35 degrees. The train from Kanchanaburi uses the Thon Buri station on the west of Bangkok. The main train station is Hua Lamphong which is on the east side of the river and closer to the centre of the city. Our chosen route was a 15 minute walk from Thon Buri to the ferry pier on the Chao Phraya river, go to pier number 3 by the Sheraton hotel and walk about another 15-20 minutes to Hua Lamphong. This could be avoided by simply jumping in a taxi, but we had vowed to not give Bangkok taxi drivers any more money unless we really had to because we had had so much trouble finding an honest driver in the past (they either took...

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