Sukhothai to Kanchanaburi via Bangkok - Day Bus

After two days in New Sukhothai, we were ready to leave and head on towards Kanchanaburi. With this not being a very common route of travel we had a few various options. We could opt to take the most direct route, which involved changing buses or we could head towards Ayuthaya or Bangkok and change.

We decided the safest bet was to get a bus to Bangkok and travel onwards from there. We managed to book a bus in New Sukhothai through our guesthouse-who went to get the tickets from the bus station for no extra commission which was a nice gesture!

The timetable of buses offered various departures between three companies with the earliest at 7.50am. We decided to use WinTour buses again (even though the last one wasn't great) as they had a first class bus leaving the bus station at 8am. This cost 310 baht each to Bangkok.

We arrived at 7.45 and waited around half an hour until the bus showed up. We boarded the bus with only one other foreign couple and the rest locals. We were given seats upstairs at the back of the bus presumably as we wouldn't be getting off anywhere before Bangkok.

This first class bus was fantastic and very new! The reclining seats were very comfortable, we were given water and snacks and the two screens showed a fast and furious movie further down the bus. We had seats 12a and 12b however if possible get 12c and 12d as your in front of the emergency exit and therefore have lots of leg room!

Nice modern bus

Screens showing Fast and Furious

This bus only stopped a few times for locals to get on and off throughout the journey with most coming around arrival at Bangkok. We also stopped once around midday for a 20 minute break. Here we redeemed a 20baht voucher we got with the ticket for some local food.

We arrived into Bangkok northern bus station around 3.15pm. From here, we tried to locate buses going to Kanchanaburi and after asking around for a while managed to find a minibus. We bought tickets for 120 baht each for a bus leaving at 4.30pm.

We boarded the bus around 4pm with our big backpacks to find that they had no storage for them on the minibus. The only option was to put them on a seat which they weren't happy about and wanted to charge us money for. We declined (as did another backpacking couple) and said they saw we had big backpacks when we bought the tickets and after some huffing and puffing, they filled up the remaining seats and we left 15 minutes earlier than scheduled. 

Not much room on the minibus!

With traffic we got told it might take over 4 hours to arrive in Kanchanaburi but thankfully it only took 3 hours. The driver really couldn't drive and we were all really crammed in but oh well.

Sukhothai to Kanchanaburi via Bangkok cost 430 baht per person with the first part of the journey being much better than the 2nd!

4 out of 5