Bangkok

Our horrible night bus continued driving until around 7:00am when we arrived at the Cambodia-Thailand border. We got out of the bus, were given our bags and stood in confusion wondering what to do next. We asked the bus attendant how the bus on the other side of the border would know that we had already paid for our onward ticket and he asked us for our tickets that we had used to board the bus the night before. I still had mine, but Alyssa had lost hers somewhere. He gave me a small piece of yellow tape that was to be used as my ticket onward but refused to give Alyssa one because she didn't have her ticket. We argued that this was ridiculous since he knew she was on the bus but he just ignored us and moved on. One of the other passengers saw our distress and gave us an extra ticket he happened to have with him so that she would be able to get a piece of tape as well. It was incredibly nice of him and I don't know what we would have done otherwise.
We waited in line to get our Thailand exit stamp for about an hour. There were only two windows open and so there were tons of people waiting to get through. The same guy who wouldn't give Alyssa her bus ticket told us that there was a VIP line where you could get straight through without waiting, but it cost $300. We thought that was absolutely absurd and continued waiting in line. After getting our exit stamp, we headed across the border to get our entry stamp into Thailand. The line here was even longer. We waited almost two hours to get through. I couldn't believe how many Cambodians found it perfectly acceptable to cut in front of the line. They would walk in and just stand in the middle instead of in the back. I was becoming infuriated by this and finally told some women "no" when they tried to cut in front of me. I was surprised by just how rude Asian people often are. They bump into you or take your space and it never seems to phase them, it's just what they do.
We finally made it through customs and didn't even have to pay an entrance fee. Once across the border, we had no idea how to find our next bus. Luckily, the bus people were looking for our yellow tape and flagged us down to wait in a nearby shop for the bus. There were a few other Americans that had been on our bus from Cambodia that were on the bus to Bangkok aswell, so we chatted with them about their respective travels. We hadn't had any breakfast, so when we stopped at a 7-11 to fill up with gas, we grabbed some snacks to hold us over. This bus wasn't going to get into town before 5:00pm (instead of 12:00pm as scheduled), so we would just have to make due.
When we arrived in Bangkok, the bus just pulled to the side of the road and dropped us off. There was no bus terminal and we weren't really sure where we were. The hostel had said that it should cost around $100 Bhat to get there from the bus stop, so we were confused when all of the cabs wanted $300 Bhat to take us. The real issue though, was that none of the cabs even knew where it was. We had an address, but it was in Thai which many of the drivers couldn't read. After four failed attempts of talking to cab drivers, we decided we needed to find some internet so that we could have better directions to explain the hostel location. Of course, we couldn't find internet either. We wandered around for a good 20 minutes before an Israeli man selling tours on the street spotted us and offered to let us go up to his restaurant and use the wifi for free. This was incredibly nice of him and I was so tired from our journey that I couldn't have been more grateful. We got a map and directions and headed back down to find a cab. The cabs would not negotiate on price so we were told to walk down to a part of town where the cabs aren't just sitting and waiting for fares, as they are often more likely to go down in price. We stopped two different cabs and they still wouldn't go lower than $300. I was almost didn't care how much it was anymore, I just wanted to get there and get the giant bag off of my back. Finally a tuk tuk pulled up and agreed to take us for $200. We had been told that tuk tuks wouldn't drive that far of a distance but this guy insisted that it was fine, so we hopped in. It soon became clear that our driver had absolutely no clue where he was going and was very likely insane. He would constantly chatter to himself and laugh hysterically. We were relieved to be off the street but since he had to stop about six times to ask people where our hostel was located, we knew it would be a long drive to get there. Finally after many wrong turns, we arrived at "Siam Journey Hostel". It was practically hidden in a back alley and was nestled among local residences. This was kind of nice because it was a safe, quiet family neighborhood.
We checked into our four-bed girls dorm on the third floor. The place was small but nice. There were two other girls staying in our room and the one we met right off the bat was very nice but a little too chatty for people who had been traveling for 48 hours. We tried to decompress a bit in the room but since we saw that was unlikely to happen, we decided to venture out in search of food. The guy who worked at our hostel was ironically from San Diego. We asked him about taking the metro to get to a restaurant that we had looked up, but he insisted that we shouldn't take the metro and that we should just walk to food near there. After such a rough few days, all I wanted was some Mexican comfort food and we were going to take the metro no matter what! Luckily, there was a metro stop right down the street and it was incredibly easy to use. Thailand was SO much more modern than Cambodia or Vietnam and we were taken aback but how nice everything was.

We got off the metro and wandered until we found "La Monita". I was excited to have some Mexican food (even though it seemed absurd in Thailand) because I knew once our friends arrived, they would only want to eat Thai food. We sat outside and both got delicious burritos- I was quite happy. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel to try and rest up in anticipation of meeting our friends the following morning. I had every intention of sleeping in and texted them to let them know we would contact them as soon as we woke up.

Posted with Blogsy