Kanchanaburi to Bangkok - Minibus

This was a fairly straightforward trip. On the main street called Maenamkwai Road there are plenty of travel agencies or hotels offering tickets for a reasonable price to Bangkok. Minibuses leave every hour to the Independence Monument, Bus Station and Khao San Road.

We booked to the latter for 160 baht per person via minibus that included pick up. We also asked about luggage after our other journey (previous post). He said for luggage you pay an extra 120 baht to buy another seat whilst backpacks are fine. I said to him we had  big backpacks but he didn't seem to understand so we just payed for one extra seat for the luggage.

The next day we were picked up promptly by a minibus taking us to the bus station in Kanchanaburi. Before boarding the bus the person who sold us our tickets earlier that morning saw our big backpacks and said we shouldn't of paid for another seat. Before we knew it he rushed off to get the 120 baht we paid to refund us which was very kind as he could of said nothing.

The next minibus we boarded was very nice with leather seats and plenty of room even with our backpacks inside. We probably waited a good 30 minutes for them to fill up the bus with locals before we left for Bangkok.

The journey to Khao San Road took about 3 hours with minimal traffic midday. We did stop once just outside Bangkok for 15 minutes for fuel.

4 out of 5 

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