The night bus: perhaps the oat common (and economical) transportation. Option for covering long distances (w/our flying and along with trains). From a rational standpoint, the night bus makes perfect sense. Get on and allow the bouncing tires to lull you to sleep and wake up refreshed at your destination. Perfect sense, right?
After saying goodbyes to the Wicked Diving family, it was time for us to move on. We had already been replaced by the new DMTs before we even made it out the door. The newbies laughing and getting to know everyone while our bags were packed to make room for them. I took one last stroll down the street and accepted that it really was time to go. Those six weeks sure did go by quickly!
We can now balance on our nose, on the end of a very small stick on the bottom of the ocean- now THAT is perfect buoyancy- and a life long skill that I'm sure will come in handy somewhere, one day, surely...right? Right.
Getting from one place to another is great late at night and early in the morning. Less people on the subways, less traffic on the roads, shorter queuing lines, AND the air is cool! Very important when dragging around scuba gear. This was my reasoning on taking an overnight bus to Bangkok to connect to Chiang Mai. That and my last minute "planning" kinda ruled out the option of flying.
I spent about a total of two weeks on a boat and not once did I get seasick. I just took off my shoes, climbed aboard and enjoyed the ride. I've taken busses before, and ridden in cars while enjoying a good book on windy roads. But man, nothing prepared me for this ride. And it really was like a ride, like a wooden roller coaster. All that was missing was the cotton candy.
Well I found myself on this bus. A double-decker bus with a 12 hour overnight ride to Bangkok. The week before it seemed like my best option so I chose it willingly. Luckily after the past 6 weeks exhaustion was in my side so I at least got to sleep some.
I can't say that for my fellow riders. They should probably sell motion sickness pills with each seat ticket. Luckily I had leftovers from the boat. I was hoping the whole time that the lady a few rows back would make it all the way. Just a couple hours in and she had for sure lost her lunch about 100km back. At least she had a little break when the army stopped us every now and again to check IDs.
After that bus ride I've come to the conclusion that a kid must have drawn the road maps in Thailand because it seemed like our bus was following their scribbles.
When we made it to Bangkok my trip wasn't over just yet, I was going all the way to Chiang Mai. I had enough with the busses so I headed to the train station. I just hopped on the back of a motorbike with my backpack on and my luggage of dive gear somehow balanced on there as well. "Same same", said the taxi driver who shuffled me onto bike. The guy driving it sure had some skills, zipping in and out of traffic and us not toppling over.
After my uneventful train ride, scheduled to be 15 hours which somehow turned into 18 hours from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, I've made it. Whew! Thought that would never happen. But hey, I'm not on a time schedule or anything so no problem. It did help that I made a friend with an eight year old Thai girl named Ping. We passed the time practicing numbers (that's really all the Thai I know and we can only introduce ourselves so many times), we taught each other animal names (I'm still not sure if she was doing a monkey sound or just getting excited), and she probably spent an hour braiding my hair too. Oh and we also played the international game of rock-paper-scissors for what seemed like countless hours.
Time to hit the streets in search of milk tea, fruit and noodle soup.
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