arewethereyet

October 7th – 10th

As mentioned in our previous post, we had to spend 3 days doing a 1900 km round trip from Bangkok to Songklah – and back…  It was a looong road to the border in Songklah starting at 5am in Bangkok the day we planned to leave (Oct 7th). The van had been wheel clamped and during a moment of temporary insanity, Kai decided to pull out the angle grinder and take the law into his own hands. At the very moment that Kai cut the padlock on the wheel clamp, a couple of traffic police on a moto passed by at 4.30am – so he was whisked away to the police station. Kai returned a couple of hours later after paying a 10,000 BHT fine/bribe, and we were on the road again by 7.30am – slightly shaken and very relieved! We got somewhat lost trying to leave Bangkok, but finally found the road south (thanks to some friendly locals) and we were away again – 900 kms of familiar road ahead of us. Travelling on the opposite side offered many new sights along with the familiar journey into the beautiful South.

The accidents on the roads were pretty mind blowing – one container had slipped off a truck, over the rail of an overpass onto the road below. The impact was so great the container had split in half. Another few cars had seemingly flown in an odd angle into the middle drain and the hold of a petrol tanker had come loose and slipped up onto the cab. The last accident we saw, before slipping across the border, involved a hilux that had done a summer sault.  After this, we became pretty conscious about the overloaded utes that zipped past us at great speeds. There were only a total of about 8 speed limit signs during the 1900 km round trip.

That first night we stayed in Surat Thani and headed for the local market for dinner. Kaia loved the banana fritters and we found a good vege snack. The hotel we stayed at was Chinese. The staff spoke absolutely minimal English but were still able to rustle up some marmalade & bread for Kaia.

The next day (8th) we made it to the border at about 3pm. We spent time with immigration at checkpoint 2 – who then directed us to the border control to chat with the Captain on duty. She was an incredibly grumpy character who had just turned a guy away with a suspected false passport before we were seen. We pushed Kaia to the front to see if she could charm an ice queen. It seemed to work – after a small lecture, we had our stamps and we able to head north again. For those wishing to sneak into Thailand – it seems the Songklah border is your best bet. We noticed that very few characters regulate who walks through meaning you can waltz in as long as you don’t try and leave by land or air.

We headed north and camped out in Phattalung that night – gate crashing a Thai wedding taking place at the ‘resort’ – (set of cabins slowly sinking into the sea). Kaia made a few friends amongst the guests before we all fell asleep to the very out-of-tune wedding karaoke that went on well into the early hours.

October 9th
The next night we stopped in Hua Hin at the Sofitel (old Railway Hotel) – the first beach resort in Thailand. The king has his beach house in Hua Hin – it was another indulgent night. Kaia loved the pool and the horse ride on the beach. We visited the wharf to watch the catches being sorted. Kaia was given a fishing rod to try her luck – we left with the fishing rod in 2 pieces stuck on something unforgiving in the harbour. In her mind she had caught a big fish that she couldn’t pull out of the water. I’m sure the owner of the rod had something else going through his mind!

October 10th
The next morning we drove through Bangkok and headed north east for the border with Cambodia. It was an easy drive – again great signposting and well maintained Thai roads. Poipet, the border town was predictably filthy and chaotic. We passed through customs, got our passports stamped and we just about to drive through border control when we were informed that once again did not have the right immigration papers for the van. My heart sank – I could see the sweat forming on Kai’s brow – once again we were in discussions with immigration about missing paper work. It turns out that Songklah had failed to provide us with the correct paperwork. A group of 26 rally cars had also arrived at the  Cambodian border without these papers the day before – a big headache for the border officials. To cut a long story short – a very helpful if somewhat frustrated senior immigration official asked us to lodge a complaint about Songklah with our embassy, hoping that this might somehow help improve procedures at the Songklah border, and also informed us that they would have let us into Cambodia without our Thai entry stamps. If we had only know that before our 3 day odyssey back to the south – we live and learn!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 9:19 am and is filed under Trip Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.