Transport
Getting door-to-door from Chiang Dao to Ayutthaya required a lot more effort than I had hoped. I will now delve into the various forms of transport I used to get from one guesthouse in the north of Thailand to a hostel in a suburban area of Ayutthaya, a city an hour from Bangkok.
1. Share Taxi
As I've mentioned before, the guesthouses near the beautiful part of Chiang Dao are seven kilometres away from the bus terminal in the main part of Chiang Dao. So you have to call a share-taxi or songthaew. In Chiang Mai, for example, you'd share this with other people and it'd cost thirty baht per person. But there was no one else where I was. So you had to pay a fixed rate of one-hundred-and-fifty baht no matter whether you were a party of one or a party of ten.
The taxi drove me for fifteen minutes and dropped me at the bus terminal in Chiang Dao. I had some lunch and bought some snacks while I waited for the next part of my journey.
2. Public Bus
The public bus cost forty-six baht for the hour and a half journey to Chiang Mai. It was efficient though it lacked air conditioning so the back door was kept open while we drove. I sat above the door and got a nice bit of air blowing my way despite almost dropping my passport three times.
3. Share Taxi
After arriving in Chiang Mai's northern bus station I needed to get to the train station, in the east. It was still a few hours till I needed to be at the station to catch my train but I had nothing to do in the city. I'd already seen all the highlights.
For most travellers these days Grab, the Southeast Asian rideshare app, would be an appropriate mode of transport for this leg. But I don't travel with a foreign sim card. Which means I can only order those types of taxis when I'm connected to wifi. For forty-six baht, free wifi was not included in the public bus ticket.
So I walked out of the station to get a maroon songthaew. I was bound to get ripped off catching one straight from the station. In fact a tuk-tuk driver had quoted me one-hundred-and-fifty baht for the journey. But I wasn't in the mood to get ripped off. I'd spent a lot of money in the previous twenty-four hours to see some caves that I had stood in for about twenty minutes. I needed a win. I negotiated a driver outside from eighty baht down to sixty baht. I thought I was winning but he was still getting double what the standard rate was.
4. Overnight Train
I arrived at Chiang Mai station at half-past three for a six o'clock departure, very early by any standards. I sat at one of the station's restaurants and had an ice tea and a bowl of mediocre khao soi, the northern Thai curried noodle soup. I passed the time reading and eventually boarded the train half-an-hour before departure.
I slept intermittently in my upper bunk throughout the overnight train journey. The train's movement rocked me to sleep early. The train's hallway lights didn't dim or go off and so they kept me awake for a lot of the night. I pushed through but woke up and brushed my teeth at five in the morning.
We were running late. We were meant to have passed Ayutthaya by now but we were still forty-five minutes out.
5. Local Train
Despite planning to stay in Ayutthaya that night, I had purchased a ticket all the way to Bangkok, the last stop of the overnight train. I figured I didn't need to be at my destination at the scheduled time of 4:58am. So I might as well overshoot the journey, getting an extra ninety minutes in bed and then take another train back to Ayutthaya.
But the train was running late and I was already awake. So when the overnight train pulled into Ayutthaya at 5:45am, I jumped off. I wouldn't be needing to spend an extra fifteen baht on a local train after all. What great savings!
5. Walk and Grab
Arriving so early in the morning, I was aware it would be a few hours till others in my new hostel would also be awake. Whilst some might take this as an opportunity to get into a real bed and complete their interrupted night of rest, I knew once I was awake, I was awake. I wasn't getting back to sleep till that night.
So I wanted to do some laundry. It seemed like a good use of time. I assumed there must be some 24/7 self-service laundry near the main street and, since I'd been lying down uncomfortably for the past twelve hours, I was happy to walk there to find out.
So I made my way over the bridge onto the main island of Ayutthaya, hoping to find a laundry. I reflected on the fact that I should have looked up a place when I was connected to wifi at the train station restaurant in Chiang Mai the day before. Then I wouldn't have to wander aimlessly in the hours when the sun was still rising. But it seemed a little late for that. I'd find a place. I'm sure there'd be a place.
I walked for a lot longer than I had anticipated but eventually found a laundry. Best of all, it was a chain laundry I had used before in Thailand which meant there was free wifi. After I'd done a cycle of laundry I ordered a Grab and took it to the hostel two kilometres away.
It was now eight in the morning. It had been twenty hours since I left Chiang Dao. I had arrived.
