Quest to See the World

Yesterday morning we woke up, got some breakfast, and caught a taxi to the bus station. Everyone is soooo helpful! When we arrived at the station we were quickly spotted, I said the name of the town, and we were guided to the right window to buy the tickets. The lady inside of the window came out and took us to another window on the other side of the station that had the name of the town on it too…it was the first class bus window. We got the tickets, $6 for a 4 hour ride in an a/c bus and the lady from the first window took us to the bus and explained to the driver where we were going. We were supposed to call Dale’s dad before leaving Bangkok, but the driver held his hand up to show 5, Stacy said “5 minutes?”, and he shook his head yes, so I didn’t think we had time to run and make a call. We grabbed some bottled water and got on the bus. The bus ticket checker lady asked to see our tickets a few times before it left 30 later.

A lady sat beside me and as the trip began, I started reading the Thailand Lonely Planet guidebook. I had noticed that a guy across the aisle in a window seat had a phone, but i was also at a window seat and that would mean that i’d have to talk over two other people. I listened to my mp3 player and read for bit. I understood that the trip would be 2.5 hours. I took a little nap about an hour into the ride and woke up about an hour and a half later. When i woke up I started thinking about how I was going to ask to use a phone. i pulled out my handy phrasebook and pointed to “Do you speak English?” and showed it to the lady next to me…”no”.    ok, i waited about ten minutes and started looking in the dictionary section at the end of the book and pointed to the word “telephone” and showed it to her as I pulled money out of my pocket, she got a confused look on her face and slowly began to pull her phone out of her pocket. i then quickly found the word “friend” and pointed to it, then to myself, and said the name of the town where we were headed, “uthai thani”. I pointed to a phone number on a piece of paper and again said the name of the town. She dialed the number and handed me the phone…yay!! it was ringing and dale’s dad answered…bingo!!! I told him that we were on the bus and we had left at 11am from bangkok. he informed me that the bus would take a total of 4 hours, not 2.5, so we still had about an hour to go. I hung up and offered the lady money, but she wouldn’t take it.

to be continued…must catch next bus. we’re now headed to nakhon sawan to catch an overnight train to chaing mai. adios.  

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Asia Trip-Summer 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.