The Road To Rayong

Our short and uneventful stay in Ban Krut is over and Thursday afternoon marked the start of our overland journey to Rayong.

We had asked the hotel front desk to have a taxi pick us up at 1:45 to take us to the station in time for our 2:20 train to Bangkok. At 1:40 the same scooter that brought us to the hotel arrived, but there was already an elderly Thai couple seated in the sidecar. The driver motioned for us to climb on board and the old folks sidled down to make room for my big butt. The driver placed our baggage on the floor of the sidecar and Brenda had the pleasure of sitting on a makeshift wooden bench behind the driver. Fortunately, the train station was only 2.7 kms from the hotel.

In an earlier blog I praised the punctuality of Thai rail. I take it back. Our 2:20 train pulled into the station at 3:05, and, as a result, our arrival time went from 7:50 to 8:25. At least they made up ten minutes along the way.

The seats on Thai rail are assigned and we were seated in car #3, seats 31 and 32, which turned out to be bulkhead seats. Unfortunately, the bulkhead housed the garbage cans and shortly into the trip, we started noticing creepy crawlers on the walls around us. At first they were very small and unidentifiable, probably the disposable scouts. But pretty soon their big brothers, sisters and moms and dads started to appear. Roaches!

Now I'm a pretty good vegan, but when it comes to roaches, I become a cold hearted killer, especially when they start invading my personal space. I soon realized, however, that my efforts were futile since for each one I killed, two more appeared. Of course, the train was full so we had no choice but to retain our seats until we were about thirty minutes from Bangkok when several seats became available. At that point we crossed the aisle, sat down and soon realized the grass only looked greener on that side because the infestation was even worse there. We finally escaped the vermin by moving one row back from the bulkhead. I have to tip my hat to Brenda since she very bravely went about reading her book and eating her snacks without any panic at all. Although, I must say, she was a little more cuddly than usual.

By the time we arrived at our hotel and settled in it was past 10:00, so we hit the sack in preparation for the last leg of our trip to Rayong.

Friday morning we arose early and grabbed a taxi to the bus station, where we purchased a ticket for a van ride to Rayong. These vehicles are 10 passenger mini-vans and are surprisingly comfortable. On a good day, the Bangkok-Rayong drive can be done in two hours, but we've heard it can take up to three and a half when the traffic is bad. I guess by catching a 7:30 ride we missed most of the traffic because we arrived at he Rayong bus station at 9:30. A very nice lady arranged a songthaew ride for us after explaining in Thai which hotel we were staying at.

After about a twenty minute ride, the songthaew pulled into Rayong bus station #2 and the driver tells us to take another songthaew to our hotel. Because we had agreed with the woman at the other bus station that we were to be transported to our hotel, I refused to pay him the fare of 30฿. He then told the other drivers there not to give us a ride so we ended up walking the 1.7 kms to our hotel. The fare only worked out to about $1.20CDN for the two of us, but it was the principal of the thing.

Once we checked in we decided to go out to the TaPhong Market, where there was supposed to be a fruit festival ongoing fron June 1 through June 5. More about that in another blog. The clerk at the reception desk explained that in order to get there, we had to first make our way to the bus station and then take another songthaew from there to the market. She went on to explain that the station is a hub for all songthaew traffic in Rayong and they all pass through there.

Oops! Now I feel terrible because I screwed what turned out to be an honest driver out of his meager fare. We'll be passing through the bus station several more times before we leave Rayong and hopefully I'll be able to find the driver, offer my apologies and make it up to him

Anyway, we left our hotel in Ban Krut at 1:45 yesterday afternoon and traveled a distance of 510 kms to arrive at our hotel in Rayong at 11:00 today.

That works out to an average of 24 kms per hour. We'd planned on doing some slow travel so I guess you have to be careful what you wish for.Read more