Day 7 – 235km. Day 8 – the rest of the way
In the morning after having a coffee and chat with Tik who i used to work for in the scuba diving business back in the 90s, we went to the locker, storage facility, emptied out all the contents, took what we wanted and thought we could carry back with us on our motorcycles and gave the rest to people in need.
Then we went to look for a coffee, took a short walk on the beach and found everything closed except a Starbucks coffee shop. After sticker shock on seeing the 180 baht price for a small coffee and not being able to find a reasonably priced coffee on the main roads we went off a cul-de-sac i knew from long ago and found a place for a snack and an Inexpensive coffee.
We were contemplating sending the motorcycles back through the post office and then I thought maybe it was just better to drive to Surattani and either approach the post office to send our motorcycles back or to check what the train situation was. With all the expensive food and drink in Patong and not very happy it was pretty much a ghost town we decided to pack up, hop on our motorcycles and spend the day driving to Surattani.
When we got to Surattani we first stopped at the train station. They told us there was a train leaving in an hour and they could accommodate our motorcycles as well. The price was about 855 each for ourselves, the sleeper car, and then another 855 for the motorcycles, all the way to Bangkok. That was an easy decision to make. So we bought the passenger tickets, took the motorcycles to the baggage manager, paid the fare, got some food to eat on the train and hopped on.
The sleepers were very comfortable even though the car we were in suffered a power outage so we had to move to the next car. When we arrived we were a little surprised to see our motorcycles being pulled over to a baggage area. We were warned that the motorcycles might actually have to go on the next train after us. I gave a tip to the baggage fellow not knowing if his request for one would be more of a mandatory request or a request request. You never know what kind of barriers can be set up if you don’t pay certain requests.
We wheeled the motorcycles out of the baggage area and a pickup truck driver called us over and agreed to take us most of the way with the motorcycles on board with us for 3500 baht (30 Baht=US$1). When we reached Chantaburi we got off, rode the rest of the way to the ferry, got on the ferry and then back to Koh Chang.
I will summarize a conclusion in the next blog.