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Lost in translation, the man from Bangkok and an eventful day at a remote resort!
Sai Yok District, Thailand
Ill start with last night once we got back to the room, we decided it would be nice to go sit out on the balcony and watch the stars. It was actually a really nice romantic setting, river flowing past, nice and dark and the sky was so clear, ive never seen anything like it. The whole thing was scattered with stars, we led there for a while watching them and managed to actually see about 4 shooting stars, there just amazing to watch! Then James must have got a little bored as he started playing with his head torch, boys and there toys! It ended up in a mini light show, he discovered it can do all sorts of things, it flashes at all different rates and actually lit up half the river when it was on. The things a beast, but I atually felt blinded after he had stopped playing with it. I secretly think that he believes he's Iron Man! Ha ha we tried to take some pictures of the sky, but its impossible to get a picture with the go pro or my phone. Which is a shame as its such a beautiful site.
This morning is was time to leave paradise and move to our next location, this proved more difficult than we first imagined. We checked out and grabbed a quick bite to eat before we left, we asked reception to call for a taxi once we had arrived back by the river taxi. We were told they had a stand at the other end and to ask there, easy enough we thought.
Quick trip back by the river taxi and we off loaded our backpacks at the other end, got all sorted and walked up to 'the stand' this was more like a chill out/dining area for the boat drivers. We had to ask about 3 different people before getting somewhere with the taxi, in the end after speaking to reception an various different people we were told 700 baht, this was not happening, way to much to go 10 km. They wouldn't even budge on price, so we decided to walk to the main road.
Bare in mind that we had got a lift half way down the road to the pier beforehand, so the walk was not going to be fun! We had to walk around 15/20 minutes up a hill to even reach level ground and get close to where we were picked up before. Some random dog decided to join the trek with us, he kept stopping, kicking up the dirt at the side of the road and doing some strange little growl! This was a little odd, but luckily we lost him half way along the road.
We had almost nearly given up our trek, when some man pulled up and asked where we were going. After a few minutes of trying to explain, showing him directions etc in thai and english, he made a call to our next hotel. He got off the phone after around 5 minutes and told us it was 15 kms away. I think he had stopped just to help us with directions, but after offering 400 baht and asking politely he agreed to take us :-)
We just had to stop at his friends house along the way so he could collect some bamboo and papaya for cooking. This man had just dropped someone off at the pier we had walked from and was on his way home to Bangkok, could have been a winner if we were heading back there today. We had a few interesting little conversations with him, mainly consisted of random shouting out fruit/veg names as we drove past them! 'MELON' 'SUGAR CANE' 'TEA TREE' I think he even told us that his tv was from England?? The language barrier was quite bad tbh, but he was friendly and made us laugh, most of all he saved us from the walk to the main road and got us to our next resort safely and more knowledgeable about the local fruit and veg ha ha.
So we're now here at our next resort, 2 1/2 hours after originally leaving paradise, a simple task of getting a taxi from the pier to the hotel turned into a 2km trek with our backpacks an a lot of conversations back and forth with the locals. I never got the name of this little man and his Mazda from Bangkok, but he is an absolute legend! Our 400 baht definitely paid for all his cooking ingredients today but we cannot thank him enough.
Time to chill, grab some food and plan our day tomorrow. The hotel were staying at is quite remote but well sign posted, you cant really miss signs for a resort called 'Wang Yai River Kwai' surely someone was having a joke when they come up with that name? So fingers crossed we can easily arrange a taxi to get us out and about tomorrow.
Well….. ha ha the new resort is set in the most beautiful surroundings, but as mentioned before its quite remote. We arrived and were shown to room 403, it had two single beds (so not ideal) but was clean and comfy. We put our stuff down and started to chill for abit, wifi was poor in the room and we couldn't connect so we took a little walk around site. We managed to connect but no internet! So we had a little wander around again and took in some of the views of the river, we still couldn't get any signal or find anyone to ask about this! The whole place is like its been abandoned, it must currently be being refurbished or reopened, everything looks clean and new but theres not a sole in site.
When we got back to the room, two little lizards decided to pop out of the curtains above our window (not ideal) so we tried to catch them, they were too fast and ended up completely loosing them. Kara not being impressed by this and immediately went to find someone to change the room. We found the woman who originally showed us to our room and after some back and forth chit chat trying to understand one another we managed to change rooms. We got into our room, this time room 302. Double bed, result, stocked up fridge, winner! Chilled once again on the bed and boom, hello mr lizard! This time I wasn't letting this one go, so after around 5 minutes of chasing him around we managed to catch him in the bin, slid it to the door and popped him outside. We then went around the room filling any little gaps with tissue paper to prevent re-entry and did a massive high 5 at our achievement!
The woman, who were guessing is the owner is lovely. She came to our room earlier and passed me a menu (all written in thai) and tried to explain what she had on offer, we simply settled for rice, veg and chicken. Washed down by two Singha beers and a coke. Whilst we were waiting for our food we tried to explain to her about the wifi not working and that it possibly needed to be reset. We could barely explain about a lizard in our room or ordering chicken and rice, so this was a major task. But we got there, she kept disappearing and coming back to ask about the wifi. In the end James spotted the router and asked if we could reset it. After a little while of explain and counting time with our fingers, 1,2,3,4,5… lol we got there. She let us reset the wifi (the good old, unplug for 5 seconds trick) and it was working! We are now the sites IT technicians, lol. The food came out and it was amazing, simple but effective. The wifi was working, and the room was free of lizards, time to now go chill, watch some marvel, write the blog and Skype the famalam. We paid the bill and ordered two more beers to take with us, we were told Singha was all out, but she had Leo, that was fine by us so off she went, next thing we know she's back, no Leo but 2 Smirnoff ices! Ha ha not what we were expecting but its alcohol so wasn't getting refused. We now look like ballers, led in bed, sipping on Smirnoff writing this. This is definitely the life!
We've also managed to arrange a taxi for 9am (thanks to google translate) so fingers crossed we can strike a deal for a good price to the hell fire pass, if not will simply go to Nam Tok and get the train back. Our little trip to the river side has been patience testing and more complicated than expected. Wish us luck for tomorrow….
J&K over and out!
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