Vagabonding begins!

The infamous Khao San Road in Bangkok

I stumbled into my guesthouse on Rambuttri street at around 11:00am.

My favorite hostel in Bangkok, Suk11 was full, so I found myself on the other side of the city where most budget travelers head to anyway.

After my all night bus, I could barely manage to check myself in, but the quiet and gentle Buddhist owner (who always asks that you speak in a hushed voice while inside the garden) greeted me with a smile and presented my bag of winter things that I had left in his care almost a month ago.

That was a good start to a Bangkok visit which I had been dreading my last few days in the islands. I was certainly too tired to deal with a crisis, so I crashed on my bed in a relatively cheap and luxurious room by Khao San standards. I was not altogether happy about being back in this city.

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Someone help the stranded Farang!

I could tell by the obnoxious smell that our ride was up.

That was OK with me. The nightbus we were traveling on just wasn’t that comfortable anyway. It was full, the AC barely worked, and it was painfully slow. I amused myself by talking about tortured souls with the Norwegian girl next to me and by trying to learn some Mayan words while watching Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.

As our “VIP coach” gave up in a cloud of poisonous smoke and came to a rolling stop, I knew that we had to be in the middle of nowhere. We were precisely somewhere between Krabi town and Bangkok. To escape the fumes and 90F sweatbox inside, all of us farang climbed out into the tall grass outside and paced around on the highway. The driver popped the engine cover and pulled out a limp fan belt which looked like a dead black snake.

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