Day Bus to Bangkok

Friday Feb. 10

James wasn't able to travel by bus. Natalie and James would have to fly to Bangkok Saturday night. The rest of us headed to the bus station.

A day bus to Bangkok. Not so much fun...

Jon gave Chris the tickets and said we had the first 6 seats on the right. Chris and the kids got on the bus. A really nice couple was sitting in "our" seats. Chris tried to explain the problem to them. They were Indian and neither of us could read the Thai tickets well. Then the bus driver came to help. He said we only had 1 seat. Chris said no, we have 6 seats. He was very nice. He told us just to sit down and wait. Jon got onboard and he was able to go buy the other 5 tickets. Thankfully there was enough space on the bus for all of us since that was the last bus of the day.

While we were traveling, our double-decker bus passed a semi truck on a one lane road in a construction zone! Crazy! But that's how it is here.

We all did pretty well on the long bus ride. We had to ask the driver to stop for a bathroom one time because there wasn't a toilet on the bus. We had a really nice driver!

We spent about 10 hours on the bus and then a couple more hours getting a taxi and we finally got to our room.

We were all really hungry and tired when we finally arrived.

Natalie and James had a bit of adventure too, finding out at the last minute that the room they were in was already reserved for that night, as were all the other rooms in the guest house. They had to go find a different guest house!

James found one online (Called T. House), they booked it, and then got a taxi to take them across town to their new place. Natalie went walking to find food and water for them after they were settled in so James could rest. She wandered through a local market, but, since she had no way to cook anything, and didn't trust the nearby Thai restaurants to understand that she only wanted vegetarian food when everything on display out front was meat, ended up with pizza, fresh squeezed orange juice, and some snacks from 7-11 for Sabbath's meals.

We just realized we didn't get a picture of the guest house where Gayle left us! It's purple! :) We even called it the Purple Guest House, but found out later its name is Erawan. :)