Chugging towards Chiang Mai

Early enough, I found myself yet again in Bangkok. I wouldn’t have any time to enjoy it, though, as I was going to try to make it as soon as possible to this one old, archaic airport that’s mostly used for domestic flights. My plan was to make it from Phuket to Chiang Mai in significantly less than the 24 hours it normally takes by train, so I thought a nice halfway solution would be to train to Bangkok, then fly from there. Being the quintessential hub, the prices would be cheaper anyway . . . it looked like it was going to work out nicely.

A Spell In Phuket

Its 4am on a Monday morning, and I just can’t seem to get myself to feel particularly sleepy at all, so I figured I’d add another installment to this travel blog. I’ve made a promise to knock off at least three days of travel time in blog writing every week here, and hopefully I’ll be able to go even a bit faster. The irony is that this installment right here will probably be three days in one go, but all the better. And sorry, no pictures this time.

Climbing Krabi

So I got up again, this time pretty early on, to try and catch my ride to the day’s fun of climbing. The van was a bit late picking me up, but not late enough for me to get a solid breakfast anywhere nearby, so I hopped in with a bunch of other people who were all just barely talkative. I was pretty tired, actually, so I mostly kept to myself at first, shutting my eyes to catch a little more rest.

and on and on

Anyway, where last we left off, I had departed Yara and Bangkok towards the bluer pastures of southern Thailand, specifically for the city of Krabi.

On to the most innuendo-rife city in the world

A scant few hours after I left Hong Kong, I touched down in Bangkok. The flight was pretty uneventful, aside from the weird whining kid next to me, who apparently pissed his pants or something while I was asleep, forcing his mother to awkwardly wake me so she could go clean him up, as well as fetching a wallet that I spotted another guy had left behind before leaving the airline.

Other than that, I made my way to the end of the line at the airport, and made my way through yet another immigration and customs department with little trouble. From there, I made my way straight to an airport express bus that would take me straight to Khao San Road, a backpacker’s haven in Bangkok, where I’d look randomly for lodgings. I was pretty much the first on the bus, and took a seat close to the door so I’d have an easy way out when it came time. Eventually, the bus was fully packed.

Canto-town

Currently I’m sitting on an island off of Thailand burnt to a crisp thanks to the harsh sun here, so I thought I’d take the day to catch up with a bit of my traveling.

And so it begins, again

I left just over a week ago from my comfortable life in Shanghai to explore Southeast Asia for the next month, as I have a decent break between semesters.

My plan was to go to Vietnam first, and by train. Long story short, that didn’t work out, for a variety of reasons, mostly relating to visa issues. But, it wasn’t too big of a deal. In any event, my first step was to take a train from Shanghai to Shenzhen, several hours after celebrating my friend David’s birthday party.