I woke up at about 7.00am. Jack Daniels was still bobbing in my head, but I was sober enough to start off on a long bus journey to be broken at Kanchanaburi. Realising that I was late, I picked up my backpack without washing up and stepped out of the hotel room. As the only kind of adventure/exploration that interests my wife would be a new shopping mall, I knew that I would be alone for at least a few days the moment I picked up my backpack.
I rushed down to sai tai mai bus station by taxi and managed to catch the 7.40am bus to Kanchanaburi. It was a slow journey even though the Sunday traffic moved much faster than the usual weekday crawl. We made a few stops along the way, the longest one at Nakhon Pathom. There were no traffic jams, but this was also no superhighway either. Fortunately, the air-con was working and the seat was comfortable. We finally pulled into Kanchanaburi bus station at 10.30am.
Kanchanaburi. I was here 25 years ago. I remember the crowded 2-storey buildings, the TV antenae all over the place. Many of the old buildings are still around, but there are much fewer TV antenae now. At the market, farm produce used to be laid out on the floor. Today, they are far more “professionally” displayed on racks and tables.
After a quick brunch (basil chicken+fried egg, 300 baht), I boarded the bus to Sangklaburi. It was an old, ramshackle thing with neither air-con nor suspension. There was also no hi-fi but such a minor shortcoming was more than made up for by the 2 boxes of chickens I was sitting next to. The bus conductor wanted to charge the owner 20 baht for each box. An argument ensued… more entertainment.
The signboard said we were 220km from Sangklaburi, 139km from Tong Pha Phum. It felt a lot further due to the poor condition of the road. It was drizzling and potholes were everywhere. The age of the bus and the load of locals and tourists (not to mention the chickens) didn’t help speed things up.
Soon after we passed Saiyok, the bus was less than half full. Not a single tourist left. By the time we arrived at Tong Pha Phum at about 1.30pm, the only passengers left on the bus were a young lady with a badly repaired cleft lip and me. The literally toothless bus driver urged us to have a meal (meals don’t really have names in Thailand when there are so many of them over a single day) at a local kway teow stall. I reluctantly ordered a bowl of kway teow soup and regretted it. The soup was not hot enough. The kway teow was hard (like the old SAF’s barbed wire beehoon) and the soup was tasteless.
At 2.00pm, the bus started again. It was a long, hard journey with numerous hairpin turns, steep ascents and descents and potholes galore that caused the bus to tremble and jolt all the way. It rained and stopped. Rained, then stop, like a teasing teenaged girl who thinks that the whole world is after her.
It was almost 5.00pm when we finally pulled into Sangklaburi. It had to start raining again. My backpacker’s persona posessed me and I walked in the rain with no aim further than checking the surroundings. I discovered that there were no hotels or guesthouses in the town centre of Sangklaburi. It’s a very small place, almost like a square, crisscrossed with lanes which are lined with shops. The guesthouse area is actually near the lake, some 2km away. I finally figured out why the motorbike taxi boys looked strangely at me when I told them I didn’t need them.
I walked down towards the lake and the signboard saying Burmese Inn caught my eye. I checked in and took the 800 baht per night air-con bungalow. As daylight was fading away like a flame on a matchstick, I quickly checked out the famous wooden bridge which was just a short walk from the Burmese Inn. Apart from being long and somewhat crooked, there was nothing really spectacular about the wooden bridge. In fact, the bridge was not perfectly maintained. Many planks had given way, making it a dangerous walk in the dark.
It was not dark yet and I saw many floating houses on the lake. Of course, it wouldn’t be too comfortable staying in these “rafts”, but these folks always have the luxury of moving their house whenever they want a change of atmosphere. On this evening itself, I saw a house being towed across the lake. Maybe the owner heard that his mother-in-law was coming.
Off to the market for dinner and it was another 2km walk there and 2km back. the marketplace was lively for a small town. The food here was decidedly Thai and hardly exotic. A pad see ew with seafood cost me only 30 baht. The smoky stalls were dishing out gai yang, pla ping and sai grok Isan. After a simple meal, I made my way back to the Burmese Inn. After a hot shower, I threw myself on the hard bed and feel asleep instantly, just vaguely aware of the wind and the rain throughout the night.
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