Simplest way to travel across Thailand is by flight from Bangkok to the major cities and from boat to the islands which don’t have airports. But if you want to see more than just the airports, you can try what we did…
We landed in Bangkok by Thai Air in morning and took the visa on arrival. This costs Tbh.1000 per person and they take only Thai Baht. It is advisable to get the currency from home as the exchange rate at the Bangkok airport is not very good. From Bangkok we had to go to Koh Tao, for which we had a train in the evening. So the whole day was spent sightseeing.
Bangkok Airport to Grand Palace
First stop for the day was the Grand Palace. We took the metro till the city and then the Chao Praya river taxi to the palace. From the airport we boarded the Airport CityLine to Phaya Thai station. From there we changed to the BTS skytrain. We took the train going towards Bearing and got down at Siam. From there we took the train towards Wong Wian Yai and got down at Saphan Taksin (Central Pier). From the station, we took the exit towards the Central Pier.
As you go towards the pier there is a booth which sells boat tickets which cost Tbh150. These are for a guided tour down the river where they tell about the buildings which you pass. Behind the booth, there is person roaming around selling small red colored tickets costing Tbh 15.
We took the tickets and waited for the boat.
The guided tour boat..
For going to the Grand Palace one needs to take the boat coming from the left which has an orange flag. Soon the boat arrived and we boarded it.
The river..
The private taxis..
We soon realized that we had to figure out the stops on our own. There were no announcements and the sighs on the piers were in Thai. We took help from people sitting on the nearby seat and managed to get down at the right stop (Tha Chang). As we got down from the boat, there was a small market. There we had some really tasty local fruits. Then we followed the crowd through the market and reached the main road. Across the road was the wall to the Grand Palace. We followed the crowd along it towards left and reached the main gate.
Grand Palace & Wat Pho
The entry ticket to the Grand Palace is Tbh 500 per person. There were busloads of tourists getting down at the gates each led by a tour guide holding a flag and trying to keep his group together. Crossing this tide of people without walking into someone's selfie was a big task. We managed to reach the ticket counter but then got caught in the long entry line after the counter. It was hot and the place was jam packed. Finally we got in. The temple complex was pretty big with multiple small temples inside. Next hour was spent clicking photos.
Phra Witharn Yod
The walls of the courtyard were full of huge painting depicting scenes from Ramayan. Seemed a bit out of place in a Buddhist temple..
Phra Siratana Chedi..
Model of Angor Wat..
In the courtyard..
The incredibly beautiful Phra Mandop..
Entry to the temple..
More pics from around the temple..
A stupa..
At the center of the complex is the Wat Phra Kaew, temple of the Emerald Buddha. Photography is not allowed inside but one can take a photo from the window.
Bhaiyaji ishmyle..
After some time the heat started getting unbearable and we were also feeling hungry. After seeing the Emerald Buddha we decided to finish our tour and go out. It took some time to find a decent place to eat, finally we decided to eat at the Subway. It was a big relief to get out of the heat and sit. After our stomachs were full and bodies rested, we left for Wat Pho, the temple of the Reclining Buddha. This time we took a Tuktuk.
The ride was short and we reached the temple. The entry was Tbh 200.
The Reclining Buddha..
After seeing the Reclining Buddha, we decided to stroll around the temple complex a bit. There were many beautiful temples inside..
and stupas..
Each temple led to another courtyard which led to another temple.
After some time we wanted to get out of the complex but kept on getting lost further and further into the maze..
More statues..
And another courtyard..
And another..
Another gallery leading to another temple courtyard..
It seemed that the temple had no ending. Finally we gave up and back tracked. As part of the entry ticket, we got a free bottle of water from Chang. God give you more business, Chang. Bell near the water stand..
We got out and took the Tuktuk for the station.
Train booking in Thailand..
In Thailand train tickets cannot be booked online. These have to be booked at the station or through agents. We had booked the train through the website www.thailandtrainticket.com. We put the itinerary on the website and transferred the money. They booked the ticket and asked us to collect it from their guy at the station one hour before the train. We reached a bit early but it was a small station and we found him quickly and collected our tickets. We had 2 hours for the train. Neha found out that there were showers at the station and they were clean ones also. After a full day of walking in the sun, the shower and change of clothes was refreshing. The train came on time and we boarded it. The train was a narrow gauge train and much smaller than the ones we have in India. It had 2 sleeper berths on each side like the side berth we have on one side. Like in India, many hawkers kept going around, selling food & drinks. The food dint look that good, so i would advice getting packed food with you. As soon as the train started, we asked the attendant to make our beds and soon we fell asleep.
Reaching Koh Tao..
The train took us from Bangkok till Chumphon. This is the nearest town on the mainland from Koh Tao. Our booking was a combined ticket so it included the transfer from station to pier at Chumphon and boat from Chumphon to Koh Tao along with the train ticket. The train reached Chumphon at 4 in the morning. The boat booked for us was operated by Lomprayah. At the station itself there is a Lomprayah counter were we showed our booking receipt and got the tickets. Then we waited for the transfer bus to take us to the pier. There were 40-50 more tourists who were waiting with us. At the station there was a lady who was selling toasts and omelettes. We had a quick breakfast. The waiting lasted for 3 hours. Finally a bus came and they asked us to board it. We reached the pier at around 7:15am and boarded the boat. The same boat went to Koh Nangyuan, Koh Tao and Koh Samui. They gave everyone colored stickers to stick on the shirts and same colored ribbons for the luggage. The color identified the destination one booked for. The boat ride took less than 1.5 hours and finally we reached Koh Tao. We had asked our hotel to book the taxi from pier for which they charged Tbh 150 per person. The taxis there are usually pick up trucks with seats at the back. We reached our hotel at around 9.30. My diving course was to start at 11.00. We had booked the hotel right at the Sairee Beach, 10mins walking distance from the dive school.
The Diving..
I had booked the SSI Advanced Adventurer course with Roctopus Dive Center. The dive shop is located right next to (almost inside the premises of) Wind Beach Resort. When i reached the place, people were busy loading the equipment on to the pick-ups, instructors giving briefings to the groups, etc. I met Shamik who was doing his dive masters training there. Actually him being there was one of the reasons i decided on Koh Tao and this dive school. He has already registered me for the course and also arranged a numbered diving mask. I was introduced to my instructor, Rachel Bolten. Then we boarded the taxi and left for the pier where we got on to the Roctopus boat. The first dive was at a site called White Rock. This dive was about Navigation and we supposed to use the compass given to us to find our way around. But being surrounded by beautiful fishes, it was difficult to focus on the compass. A few minutes into the dive i started hearing a hissing sound. Initially i ignored it but it persisted. I looked around and saw a string of bubbles rising from my BCD (jacket of the scuba equipment). Shit!! it was my oxygen that was leaking. I immediately checked the pressure gauge and found that it wasn't moving much. Thank God.. Atleast the leak wasn't that bad. Basically the air i filled in the BCD was leaking. So when ever i added some air to increase buoyancy, it slowly leaked and i started falling again. So a lot of time and effort was spent in getting the buoyancy right. But still the dive was fun. We went along a wall which was full of sea life. After almost an hour we came up and boarded the boat. Then we went to a site called Japanese Garden. Next it was a site called Buoyancy World, where we had to do the Buoyancy Skills Dive. With a leaking BCD, achieving neutral buoyancy was impossible. So i either kept floating up or landing on the ocean floor. Again the sea life was abundant and we came out in an hour. By the time i reached the hotel, it was afternoon and i was also very tired.
The beach in the evening..
Rest of the evening was spent resting. At night we went out to see the night life of Koh Tao. There are bars set up all along the Sairee Beach many of which have performers playing with fire.
Next morning I reached the dive shop at 6am. First dive was a deep dive. The dive site was Chumphon Pinnacle. We went to a depth of almost 30mtrs. At the deepest we settled on the ocean floor. Rachel carried an egg with her. She broke it in the water. The pressure so much that the egg yolk and white stayed together and kept floating in the water. She pushed it gently towards me. I pushed it back towards another diver in our group. This way we played ping pong for some time till the fish around us noticed and attacked the floating food. Within seconds it was gone. We spent some more time enjoying the sea life till the oxygen levels indicated that we go up. Then we saw schools of Travelly and Bat fish. Then there were Barracudas. They were just standing still in one place in a group and going nothing. The next dive was a wreck dive. After a long surface interval, we suited up again and went to see the wreck of HMS Sattukat. It was very murky around the wreck and visibility was very poor. Infact we couldn't dive lower than the deck as nothing was visible. There were many groups swimming around the wreck and initially focus was more on avoiding hitting the other divers than on the wreck. Infact in trying to avoid another diver i hit Shamik on the head and his tank banged into the ship. From the ship we had a long swim till our boat with just water all around. There wasn't much sea life. I reached the dive shop by 1pm. Neha was also there and we had lunch with Shamik and Nadya.
Next day i had booked 2 fun dives. I reached the dive shop at 6am again. We went to White Rock. Since i had booked at the last minute, this group had been made because of me. So there was me and the dive master Oli and 2 dive master trainees. There were no skills or tasks. Just finning around, enjoying the sea life. We saw the usual small fish. Then a big fish passed us. Oli make sign of a gun and realized that was a Trigger fish. I immediately changed my direction. These attack the divers specially in their mating season. Behind it was another small Trigger fish. I was happy that i saw so many fishes and content with the dive. But then came the biggest achievement. Up ahead a group of divers were surrounding a small pinnacle and looking at the top. As we passed we saw the object of their attention. Sitting on top of the pinnacle was a big Turtle!! Even though Koh Tao literally means Turtle Island, the turtles are extremely rare. Some of the instructors have been diving there for months and not seen one. We stopped immediately and gazed at the elusive animal. After some time, the turtle got fed of the attention and got up and swam up towards the surface. Now totally content with the dive, we came back. The next dive was after an hour. This time we dint anything new. By now after having completed good number of dives, i was getting more competent in managing my buoyancy. I was enjoying being completely weightless and just floating in the water. I was more at ease with changing directions, floating at odd angles especially facing upwards. So irrespective of the sea life, i was just enjoying being there. After almost an hour we came back up but had to swim for very long to reach the boat. After reaching back, we had lunch with Shamik and Nadya at a local shack. We tried some of the green and red curries.
In the evening i was to go for the night dive which was part of my Advanced Adventurer course.
Sunset at Sairee Beach (clicked by Neha)..
So 5pm again i reached the dive shop, met my group & the instructor Anna. We were supposed to go down at sunset but some instructors got delayed. So we had to wait for over half an hour for them. The site for the dive was Junkyard. It was a man made site where they had basically sunk different metal objects to the ocean floor and sea life had growth around them. There were metal platforms of different heights, gym, skeleton of a car, etc. The depth was also only 10mts. There weren't a lot of fish but if one looked in the nooks and cranny, one could find them hiding. In a night dive there are more chances of spotting eels and rays. Even after an hour we hadn't seen any. As we were going towards the boat, we saw a some kind of Spotted Ray. Dive accomplished!!.. We came out and returned to the shore. That was the end of the course and end of diving in this trip.
Koh Samui..
We had asked the hotel to book the boat to Koh Samui. It was 2 hours journey. The carrier was Seatran. Along with the boat ticket we booked the transfer from Samui pier to our hotel. We were staying in a resort called Samui Beach Villa. They have villas on the beach, with most of them having a private pool. Ours also had a lovely location right on the beach.
The room was not very large but the view from the window was awesome..
The room..
We rested for some time, then went out for lunch. Before going we rented a scooter which costed us Tbh 350 per day. We would have gotten a better deal (Tbh 200-250) outside the hotel but there was no way to reach there which would not have costed more money than what we would have saved.
As we were roaming around, searching for some decent place to eat, we saw a sign saying that there was a waterfall in few kms. We decided to check it out. At the indicated place was a big complex. There was a zoo there as well as an elephant safari. At the counter they asked us if we want to take a 4x4 till the waterfall as the climb was very steep. We thought it was just a money making gimmic but still decided to take it. As the car started to climb, we realized how good our decision was. It was sharp incline and even the 4x4 had to climb with momentum to go up. As a result the car dint slow down for the bumps in the road and people were literally getting thrown around. When we reached the top, there was a sign for the waterfall. We followed it and reached a small pool with water falling from top of the rock. There was a bridge across the water and then there was climb with steps cut into the rocks. We kept climbing but the climb dint end. We were walking through jungles, over slippery rocks. Finally a waterfall came.
We saw people climbing further up. We followed and after another tedious climb came to another part of the same waterfall. Here we could see water falling through the trees from top of the mountain..
By now we were famished. We made our way back through the jungles..
and reached the base of the park..
Again we started driving around searching for a restaurant. Finally we found a french bakery which looked good. The food indeed was good or maybe we were just too hungry. Till we reached back, it was almost sun down. We went straight to the pool and rest of the evening was spent there.
The night sky..
Next day morning, the resort was organizing snorkeling lessons. Very excited, we went to the beach house. The guide there gave us masks and snorkels and walked us into the sea. The sky was clouded and it was not very sunny and even when we reached waist high water, we could not see anything underwater. So we had to abandon the trip and came back disappointed. It was afternoon and we were hungry. So we took our scooter and went out to find a restaurant. This time we decided to explore a new road. This one took us to the Tiger zoo and aquarium. We dint feel like stopping there so continued on. The road took us up a hill and down on the other side. There we saw a board which read Kayaking. This seemed interesting. We followed it. Another sign took us off the main road and into the fields. Through a small pathway, we reached an empty parking lot next to a body of water. We parked the scooter and walked to the river. We could rent the kayaks here and go kayaking up the river. We were very hungry and decided to try it later. We came back to the main road and continued our search for a restaurant. Ahead i saw a sign which said Hin Ta Hin Yai. I had read about this monument in Samui which was basically 2 rocks shaped as the genitals of a man and a woman. Hence the name Grand Father & Grand Mother rock. We turned towards these as surely a tourist point would have good restaurants. We were right. There was a small market near the view point where there were local restaurants as well as gift shops. We ate at one of these restaurants. On the way out, we saw an ice cream parlor named Leonardo, which claimed that it sold original Italian ice cream. We walked in and were greeted by a smiling man with heavy Italian accent. He said he was the owner and he made all the ice cream himself. We tried some of the flavors and they were really good. I felt that trying all of them one by one. Finally we had a Tiramisu scoop with a scoop of caramel ice cream. The Tiramisu was just awesome. After that we went back to the hotel. Earlier on the beach next to our room, there was a wedding being setup. It was a cute little setup, something the would never be possible in an Indian wedding. Notice the sunshine.
Till the time we reached back, the wedding was in full swing. Suddenly the sky got cloudy and in half an hour it turned to this..
It also started drizzing. The poor guys had to wrap the beach celebration and move quickly indoors. The sky kept getting worse..
There were 2 kids on the beach who were digging in sand. We asked them what they were doing. They said they were trying to make a channel for water which was collected in a hole. From the clouds overhead it seemed soon there would be too much water all around...
As suddenly as the clouds had appeared, they disappeared. There was no more rain than a little drizzle which interupted the wedding. The couple sure had a tough luck. We spent the rest of the evening in the main hotel pool and then playing table tennis.
After that, we took our scooter and went for dinner. We kept on riding but couldn't find a place we liked. We crossed the Lamai area. Then the road started going uphill. Our little scooter had to put in a lot of effort but it kept on going. We refueled on the way. There are shacks selling bottles of fuel everywhere. And then we kept on going. Soon we realized that we had almost reached Chaweng Beach. Might as well go all the way. So we carried on. At one place we saw the sign indicating the turn for the beach. We took it and after taking a little help from the locals, reached a big market. The traffic was one way here and it was opposite the way we wanted to go. So we parked and started walking. How far could the beach be!!.. We started walking. We wanted to sit in a place by the beach and have our dinner. The market had local shops on one side and either resorts or upmarket restaurants on the other. Surely these resorts were facing the sea, so we just had to find the road in between them which took us to it. We kept walking on and on. There was no cut for the sea. After almost an hour, we were about to give up. We could hear the sea nearby but there was no way to reach it. We crossed McDonalds and Starbucks and were very tempted to just go and eat there. Finally we decided we could not go further and were about to turn. There was a resort on our right and just on a hunch, i walked into it. It was very dark and Neha was wanting to turn back. The path led past the reception and directly to the beach. Finally!! We reached the beach. It was pretty empty. We started walking back along it. It was covered with resorts all along it. One had a nice restaurant. We sat there and had our dinner. Dinner by sea accomplished..
Koh Samui to Bangkok
Next day we checked out in the afternoon. We had a boat + train booking done from www.thailandtrainticket.com as described earlier. The ticket just mentioned that the pick up was from the "New Bus Terminal". No one had any idea where this was. Google said this was near Chaweng. So we took the hotel shuttle to Chaweng Central Mall. When we reached there and asked, we were told that this was in Nathon which is on the other side of the island at an hour's drive. Shucks!! We had wasted a lot of time coming in the wrong direction and how had only 1.5hours before our boat left. We quickly got some lunch packed and took a taxi. We reached the bus terminal just in time. The travel agency through which the website had booked our ticket had an office there. We got our boat tickets from there and the usual stickers to put on the shirt which indicated our destination. This time it was Surat Thani railway station. We were told to board a bus which took us to the pier. The boat service which we used was SeaTran. The boat was a huge one which also carried cars & buses. We were told to leave the luggage in the bus and board the boat. We saw that the bus was also being boarded. 1.5hour journey bought us to the Seatran Pier at Donsak. Here we were loaded back on the bus and started towards Surat Thani which was 80kms away. We reached our destination at around 5pm. The train was at 7:50pm. We went to a cafe nearby and sat there. All places in Thailand provide free wifi if you are spending there. The food was also very good. At 7:30 we left the cafe and went to the station. As we were waiting for the train, we saw one lady writing timings for the trains on the board. We checked and realized our train was 1.5 hour late. Oh no.. There was another cafe on the platform. We went there. The owner here was a real cheapskate. She would only let you use wifi if you bought something worth Tbh 200 and that also for one device for an hour. Buying water or cold drinks dint count. Well we got wifi on one phone so we were able to talk at home and also see what to do in Bangkok the next day. We checked after an hour, the train got further delayed. Then delayed again. Finally it came at around 11pm. We boarded and immediately went to sleep. Next day we were supposed to reach Bangkok early in the morning but thanks to the train being delayed, we reached at around 12pm.
We had a flight at 11 at nite so had the full day to explore Bangkok. It was Saturday and i had read about this weekend market, Chatuchak Market.
Chatuchak Market
To reach the market, we took the Skytrain BTS to Mo Chit station. From there we just had to follow the crowd to reach the market gate. The subway also goes there and the station to get down is Chatuchak Park station. I had read that this a huge market spread across 35-acres with over 8000 shops. As we entered through the narrow entrance, i realized how big the market was. It was organized into sections. In the beginning it was clothes, then furniture, home decor, handicrafts, food & beverage, etc etc. We dint go beyond that.
organic scented soaps..
wood stuff..
incense sticks..
footware..
Soon the luggage we were carrying started feeling more and more heavy and the heat got unbearable. We left the market and returned to the BTS station. From there we went to Phaya Thai station from where we would get the train to the airport. We had a dinner nearby and then left for the airport and that was the end of the Thai adventure.
Good bye to Bangkok..
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