Passage to Hualomphong Station

After a sweet send off by fifteen of the staff and volunteer community at Golden Village Guesthouse this morning [late post, that was 14/12], we left the sweet security of our Siem Reap life on a long journey to Luang Prabang, Laos. Step One: road travel from Siem Reap across the Cambodia-Laos border to Hualomphong Railway Station in Bangkok.

Against my instinct and better judgment (here’s the lesson in this blog), I bought us tickets for the much maligned-online “package trip” with a bus from Siem Reap to the border followed by a minivan to Bangkok. We were to leave at 8 am and arrive in Bangkok at 3pm with plenty of time for some chill time and Thai (yum!) dinner before our overnight train trip to the Thai-Laos border.

Our courtesy shuttle no-showed, the bus left an hour late, the bus to the border and the mini-van in Thailand had three “commission” stops for 30 minutes at remote restaurants where the driver gets paid for bringing in the customers. Ultimately we arrived in Bangkok in crawling rush-hour traffic short on time to 

catch our train.

We had the minivan pull over on a very busy street so we could catch a taxi to the subway to the railway station. We encountered a long line of people waiting for taxis with none in sight. The tuk-tuks were all full. And with the dense traffic, neither was a great option. Then appeared , around the corner, like a vision of an oasis in the desert,  three shiny taxi motorbikes with helmeted riders. After a short moment of hesitation, we were mounted behind the drivers, Isaac hanging half his butt off the back of his bike behind Avi, all of us with backpacks on our back and daypacks on our front. With ninja driving, the bikes swerved and sped between cars and expertly maneuvered against traffic on one-way streets. We got to the subway station in about three minutes! It was the awesome highlight of the day!

After a very nice subway ride and some quick pitiful food shopping at the station, we embarked on our comfy overnight train journey. BBQ Pringles were the highlight of dinner, a far cry from the amazing Thai cuisine we had anticipated. No stress amongst the family through it all; we are all getting good at having fun with life as it comes at us!