Saturday, November 20, 2004 (Khao Lak - Thailand)
The result of three intensive days of diving. The
bliss of doing nothing. More practical logistics to worry about already. Still
thinking about those wreck dives.
Day 257 (67). The past three days of diving
must have clearly taken its toll as we slept in almost long enough to miss the
complimentary breakfast this morning. We just about managed to drag ourselves
out of bed and down to the restaurant in time. The continental breakfasts here
in Thailand are always the same with eggs, frazzled bacon, mini frankfurter
sausages that are split at one end and a strange sort of sliced ham. Our
breakfast this morning was nice enough but nothing like the magnificent morning
meal that we enjoyed on board the
Mariner-1.
For the most part we
lounged around the pool today and did pretty much what we came here to do
– nothing. I took advantage of the downtime for some much needed catch-up
on my daily journal entries. I was no less than three whole days behind and I
desperately needed to spend some time behind the keyboard to rectify this. After
a couple of hours down by the pool and a couple more up here in the room, I
managed to pull myself all the way back to
today.
We’ve been giving a lot
of consideration to doing the Surin Islands live-aboard but our thirty-day visas
expire in a week from now and this means that we will have to leave the country
and come back in again to obtain another thirty days before we do anything else.
If we fail to do so before the visas expire, we could be in a lot of trouble
– certainly it would result in a hefty fine for each of us. We could just
pop across the boarder into Burma, which is not far from here, but the problem
with that is that our passports are still in Bangkok. We left them there with a
visa service to arrange for our visas into Cambodia and Laos. Whatever happens,
we must go back to Bangkok to collect our passports. Since it’s necessary
for us to leave the country and come back in again, and we want to visit the
temples of Angkor Wat at Siem Reep in Cambodia, the best solution seems to be to
go to Siem Reep and back. I’ve heard so many horror stories about the bad
road to Siem Reep so we will probably fly. Air Bangkok has some half way decent
fares directly to Siem Reep from Bangkok for about 2,600B (€50) per
person, one-way. I made my way over to an Internet café this afternoon to
try to book this flight but even after trying several different Internet
cafés, I could get far enough through their web site to be able to book the
tickets. I’ll have to try this again tomorrow. Having struck out on the
flight booking, I next tried seeing about booking our overnight train to Bangkok
through a couple of different travel agencies here in town. This apparently
requires first taking a three-hour bus journey to Surat Thani and then catching
the train to Bangkok from a small town close to there. The problem is that all
the ticket agents here in Khao Lak charge an arm and a leg for commission for
the train tickets so we may end up getting the bus to Surat Thani and then
trying to book passage on the train ourselves locally. The train passes through
there every half an hour or more from between six and ten in the evening so it
should be relatively straightforward to get a sleeper seat on at least one of
the passing trains. Our carriage from Bangkok down to Chumphon was half empty so
I’m not expecting it to be a real
problem.
I also popped into the Sea
Dragon office and chatted with Guy, the dive co-ordinator, there about the wreck
dives. He wasn’t sure about whether or not there was going to be a dive
master available for tomorrow and asked if I could come back later to check. I
eventually went back to our hotel after chasing after logistical issues for
several hours but having come back essentially empty
handed.
We ended up spending the
remainder of the afternoon and early evening in our room in front of the TV.
Once again, it was an early night for us both.
Posted: Sat
- November 20, 2004 at 05:39 PM