Our overland trip from London to Thailand is now… over. We spent our last couple of days in pleasant Hua Hin, a coastal city about 200km south of Bangkok which is popular with the Royals, Germans and Scandanavians. To get there, we left Phi Phi Island the same way we came, and at Surat Thani we boarded the 16.46 train to Hua Hin which arrived just after midnight (we actually managed to sleep on a comfortable converted bed in a carriage with 20 others, the only mishap being the open can of Coke some passenger carelessly placed on my backpack which spilt everywhere when I took the bag off the rack).
In keeping with the ‘resort’ theme, we spent our last couple of days at the two-week-old
Sheraton Hua Hin which, apart from being spanking new and therefore not too expensive, has a huge lagoon pool - the longest, if not the biggest, pool I’ve ever been in. All rooms are either on the ground or first floor and the pool skirts around the hotel buildings like a slithery eel - as you swim through it there are bubbling seats, fountains, spouts and even lost lizards.
Our dreams of relaxing in an almost empty resort hotel were almost shattered when we pulled up and noticed six buses and the words, MICROSOFT CORPORATE CHALLENGE. Damn! There were 200 people in the lobby, consulting a big HELP DESK and a board with the words ACTION PLAN - SEP 1 written on it. Apparently, the Challenge is an annual Indian initiative pitting together the “top 50 corporates of the country in what will be the ultimate battle of strategy, mental agility, physical endurance and above all teamwork.” It costs US$13,500 to ship a team of seven to the venue and have them participate. ALL of them were wearing basketball-type uniforms in blue, yellow, red or green — that corporate culture crap really annoys us. They were chattering away and we thought we might have to share the pool with them. Luckily, they did not hang around as they had mental endurance activities to do; the only proof of their having ever been there were socks and corporate clothes hanging off the balconies to dry. The other good thing was as many Indians are vegetarian, at breakfast we had more of these options to choose from, if you can stomach potato curry patties and fried rice at 9am (and of course I could).
So — that afternoon and the next full day was spent at the pool, and that was pretty much it. We then got a pre-paid taxi straight to the airport (cost about US$55; it is 3 hours’ drive away). Immediately the agitation of being at an airport overwhelmed us. After having been travelling overland so long, the idea of a) putting sharp objects separate to your hand luggage and b) separating liquids into clear plastic bags was enough to make you stress out. After all the travel, the biggest security I had to endure before that point was the x-ray machine at the Eurostar terminal in London. I had to put my bags through the machines at Beijing and Shanghai train station but no one’s really looking and you can bring hand luggage through no problems. I didn’t put anything through any x-ray machine all the way from China to Thailand!
Then the flight to Sydney itself… body odour from a dude sitting 10 metres away, and a guy behind us whose pits emanated stink whenever he reached up to the overhead locker. Then, when we landed (late, because of the extra APEC Summit security), we had to wait for the quarantine officer to check the plane, then traipse through the stupid Duty Free shop that sold $20 Toberones. I was able to go through security in 10 seconds using my biometric passport but had to wait 30 mins for my luggage, while a woman ordered a beagle to sniff my bag for plant material. We then joined a disorderly queue to the area where 10,000 people check 100,000 people’s bags for foodstuffs. Then another massive queue for the taxis where we had to pay a $2.50 Airport taxi tax. It took 2 hours to get out of there!!!
Overland all the way!!!!!
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