After a few days exploring Phuket, we headed back up to
Bangkok before moving onto Cambodia. We were staying in the old town in Phuket
on Ratsada Road and found that the bus station was only a 10-minute walk away
from our hostel. With being so close, we decided to head over there to buy our
tickets instead of getting charged extra by using a booking agent.
Upon arrival at the bus station, we asked a few locals where
we could buy tickets to Bangkok from and we were directed to a few different
offices until we found the right one! We were given a list of various times and
prices for buses to Bangkok. They ranged from around 450 baht up to 1000 baht with
a company called ATS which had various times. Bangkok has two main bus
terminals in the North and South. We decided to pick a first-class night bus to
Bangkok’s South Bus Terminal that was leaving at 17.30, took around 12/13
hours, cost 587 baht each and had aircon and a toilet. There were also options
to get a second-class bus or VIP bus.
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| Bus Terminal 2 ?? |
The day we were leaving Phuket, we left our hostel an hour before departure and walked over, picking up a few snacks from a 7/11 on our way to the bus station. When we got to the bus station, we were again pointed in several directions as there seemed to be some confusion about our tickets. In the end, I went back to the office where I bought the tickets from and asked where we needed to wait. Then we discovered our mistake…
With only had 45 minutes until our bus left, we had
apparently gone to the wrong bus station! We hadn’t realised Phuket had another
bus station. I think the language barrier when buying the tickets may have led
to us not realising. Anyway, we were now worried we might miss our bus as we
were told it was quite far away and would take at least 30 minutes in current
traffic. The only taxis around the bus station were motorbikes and with there
being two of us plus backpacks we didn’t fancy this. We headed down the road
and managed to find someone who was willing to take us in his car for 300 baht,
not 100% sure if it was actually a taxi or not!
Anyway, we were now on our way to Phuket Bus Terminal 2
which we now know is 6km north of the other bus station. Traffic was very busy
and we thought we would probably end up missing our bus. However, the driver
was a very nice chap who knew we were in a hurry and took a few local shortcuts
and we turned up just in time! We quickly found our bus and it left literally 2
minutes after we boarded it. A very chilled day nearly turned into a nightmare!
The journey itself wasn’t too bad, the bus was very empty
and you got given a little snack and drink. I would try picking a front seat
for the extra legroom. We asked about moving seats but the lady attendant was
adamant we couldn’t move even though half the coach was empty. By 10pm, we
decided to move seats anyway as it was much comfier to sleep across two seats.
The journey went quite quickly with a little stop early on
for some food and drinks and we pulled into Bangkok’s South Terminal not long
after 6.30am. I would recommend going to Bangkok’s South Bus Terminal if your
heading towards the Koh San Road area as your only about 5km away.
Now we headed over to the taxi rank which were asking 250
baht for a short drive to near Koh San Road, of course this was massively
overpriced even with morning traffic. In the end, we managed to get them to use
the meter however this backfired on us. We were taken a very long way to our
hotel instead of using the direct route and got stuck in terrible traffic on
the highway. This meant the drive took well over an hour and cost a similar
price to what he asked for at the start. Unfortunately, at the time I didn’t
have my offline maps loaded on my phone to point out that I knew what he was
doing. Oh well, we learnt from this mistake and finally got to our hotel around
8.15am before exploring Bangkok one final time until we headed off to Cambodia!
Not a bad overnight journey, plenty of space on the bus and
we learnt a valuable lesson about taxis in Bangkok.
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| Time for a beer! |
3 out of 5
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