I Survived Driving in Thailand!

THAT'S a new T-shirt that I need to get!

Actually it went very well...started off on a rough spot though. We rented the car and no sooner did we get on the toll highway, then the fuel light starts flashing! Off we get, get the fuel, get turned around and back on to the toll highway...wrong direction though! When Larka asked in I "could read a map", I thought she said "take a nap"...so we were in big trouble now.

But it all worked out, we just took a different route and had tons of fun!

We started out southeast of Bangkok at a town called Si Racha...nice small town atmosphere, with a room on the water! We went for dinner and found a bar with live music. Mostly Thai; but they attempted several songs in English...including Eagles and such. The next day we took a ferry ride to the island of Ko Si Chang where we took a tuk tuk tour of the island with Chinese temples and ended with a swim in the Gulf of Thailand. Back onto the ferry around 3pm and on the road to Ban Kon Krung.

We arrived in Ban Kon Krung in the dark which made finding our Guest House almost impossible. Finally we called them on the phone and told them we were at the 7-11! She said she would come and pick us up right away. About 10 minutes later we get a phone call that she can't see us at the 7-11....odd we thought...turns out we were in the next town! lol...tourists! Anyway, finally got that all figured out and grabbed some food and off to bed. The next morning we're off to explore the Khao Yai National Park...and ran out of gas in the middle of the park! Hey Larka was in charge of guages! Anyway, 5 young Thai kids (everybody is a kid compared to me) helped us out immensely...see the "Gas Crew" photo above!

The next morning we headed off to Lop Buri to see the monkeys! We piled two more people into the car...Marius took over navigating and did a great job! Carolyn and I just watched from the back seat...glad not to have to work at all! The monkeys were amazing! We continued on that afternoon the the city of Ayutthaya which used to be the capital of Thailand.

We did a day/night tour of the city which was pretty interesting and included the elephant camp and finished with the night market. It would have been nice to get closer to the temples that were closed at night; but nice to see at night as well.

The next morning Larka and I said our goodbyes and headed off to Kanchanaburi. At breakfast we met three girls from the USA, two of which had been to Chiang Mai and gave us endless good tips! Special thanks to Kaitlin and Susan! Ginger said she was heading to Chiang Mai later that day, and I will be heading there on Sunday...hope to catch up and do a few things together. We left about 9:30 and got to the National Park to see the waterfalls just before a torrential downpour on our drive back to town.

The next morning, we just laid in the sun on the floating deck on the River Kwai! We left about noon, dropped the car off in Bangkok at about 3pm, found me a guest house for Saturday night.

Larka and I grabbed our last meal together and then wandered the market until she had to catch a taxi for the trip back to Holland! I had a great time Larka, thanks for sharing some of your holidays with me!