food-drink links
It was a nice part of travelling, as not only did you feel you were accomplishing some great feat, it gave the old map reading skills (we had grown up walking and orienteering) a real life test. There were times when I could arrive in a strange town (Phnom Phenn being the most memorable) when I knew where the sun would be and which shoulder it should be shining over for me to be walking in the right direction. The thinking being, if you get far enough from the bus station, the taxi hordes stop following you on foot. It does work and you are not only on the right road, but passing taxis think you know what you are doing and charge sensible fares.
Today, we have things like Thaiticketmajor.com, and staff with mobile phones that instantly conjure up these things that may have taken hours or days to accomplish prior to the intenet age I just told Bee I was heading back to Khao Lak tonight and voila! I get an SMS and it's my ticket. Nice, but not the hard core travelling I started out on all those years ago.
Sai Tai Mai bus station used to be on the other side of the world as far as we were concerned. It was so difficult to get to that most people took the cheap and nasty busses from Khao San Road..... I did the first time, but never again.
In later years, I found Sai Tai by sheer dogged determination and Yorkshire stingyness. Then about 9 years ago, my wife started teaching me the Thai alphabet and a whole new world opened up to me. I could read (after a year or so) where the busses were going and where the stops were, could understand the numbers on the Bangkok Bus stops and basically get around. I really loved those days as often due to my slow and limited Thai skills, I had to get busses to places I knew ie places on the river where I knew I could get the ferry down to Saphan Thaksin and thence onto the Skytrain which had just opened back then.
Lite post today as it's all about getting widgets and buttons working today!
No comments:
Post a Comment