Cycle Touring Thailand - Bangkok to Hua Hin
We landed in Bangkok at 8pm and found a hotel in nearby Lat Krabang for the night, just managed to squeeze the bike boxes and luggage into a maxi taxi that got us there for the premium price of 300 baht or AU$10. The traffic at first glance is a bit crazier here than Malaysia so we decided we’d catch a train out of Bangkok before getting on the bikes again.
We picked a town called Hua Hin about 200km south of Bangkok as the starting point for our cycle trip to Phuket, because it’s about 700km from Phuket and we’ve got 10 days to get there for the Thai New Year festival.
We spent our second day figuring out how to catch trains from Lat Krabang to Bangkok Central and from there to Hua Hin. It was a mission to get the bikes onto the trains because we had to squeeze them up stairs through a little door that was barely big enough, and to make things interesting the train from Lat Krabang started to pull away as the first bike was only half way on the train! Tina was on the carriage holding one end while I was on the platform holding the other when everything started to move. Luckily the guard was there and got on his walkie talkie straight away and the train stopped after only a few metres, but for a moment there we thought we were going to be down one bike and split up!
After that it was pretty much smooth sailing for the rest of the day, neither of us expected the train ride to Hua Hin to be anything noteworthy, the train was an old rickety thing with no aircon and we were hot and sticky from a day of constant sweating, but we absolutely loved it. Just watching the world go by through the big open windows was so peaceful, perfect for pondering what lays ahead for the rest of this trip and beyond. In a word, content 🙂
By the time we got to Hua Hin it was getting pretty late and neither of us really liked the idea of getting up to cycle after only a few hours sleep, so we decided to spend an extra day here. Also as it turns out Hua Hin is a happening little town, neither of us had ever heard of it before but it’s packed with restaurants, bars, guest houses and shops etc. Kinda feels like a relaxed version of Patong Beach in Phuket.
Apr 3, 2013
