I am a fussy traveller.
Trip Start
Jul 07, 2011
1
30
67
Trip End
Ongoing
Kanchanaburi, Kanchanaburi, Thailand
Thursday, August 4, 2011
the cabbie pulled up outside a nice looking bus station, big concrete building, hundreds of nice big buses....then he drove on after shouting something to some men outside and drove us to another place....there were also buses here, mini buses, and people singing kareoke, and cages with rabbits in....it was pretty confusing, and noone spoke much english, so my miming air conditioning must have looked pretty daft. after waiting half an hour whilst thinking, where the hell are we going to end up, we get on a minibus, that luckily is basically empty, and settle down for the journey...
i spent most of it playing with a really cute little thai boy while his parents slept, and before i knew it we had arrived, i thought the journey was longer than it was, so in my head we were stuck on a bus for four hours, in actual fact, it was two. much better.
we got off the bus and it is stinking hot, we get into a tuk tuk and get taken to our hostel. i had a bad feeling about it when we walked in so asked to see the room first, it was a total dive. water dripping down the walls, more scuff marks than paint, a totally cracked up and broken looking bathroom and it stank of warm urine. i said no. so she showed me to another room, for the same price as a good will gesutre for the other room being so rank. the other room for some people would probably have been paradise, for me, it was hell.
i am a fussy traveller, i don't care, i won't stay in a shit hole, as these places are effectively my home for the time i am in them.
this new room, was a wooden hut, on stilts, in the river, which you had to cross little walkways and bridges to get to. it also stank, the floor and walls were full of rather large (snake sizes) holes and cracks. i asked the lady, do you get snakes here, she smiled at me and replied, yes many many snakes.
great. just great.
i decided to give the room a go. fight the fear and all that. i lasted about an hour, the air con blasted out hot air, and everytime adem moved or made a noise i was convinced it was a massive viper poised to attack me. so we did a frantic internet search and found a place we liked the look of, and luckily they had a room.
so we grabbed our bags and left our first hostel sharpish. adem did a great job at taking no nonsense from them and got us all our money back. i was so relieved to be back on the street and away from that watery hell. knowing my luck i would have fallen right into the water at night. not a place for those who like any semblance of hygeine, comfort, coolness or a snake free environment.
the new hotel sent a funny little tuk tuk to meet us, it was a motorbike with a three sided bench attached to the side like a sidecar, and was lots of fun, the driver thought adem was a mexican, to be fair his face is very brown now,i am still very pale after a month, as i hide from the sun here.
we checked into the new place and i walked into this spotless cool room with a whole wall of windows overlooking a beautiful thai garden and a SWIMMING POOL. as soon as the staff left the room i did a pretty epic happy dance.
we got changed staight away and basically ran straight into the pool. bliss. i think i need a few days of light sightseeing and heavy sunbathing and pool lounging. we had lots of fun splashing about in the pool chatting to a nice couple from barcelona, the girl and i were saying how much we could do with eating some decent olives...mmmmm green olives.
think we are going to really enjoy our few days here!!
