One of the worst decisions we’ve made on the trip, and probably in our lives, involved an overnight ferry from Ko Tao to Chumphon. This ten hour journey cost 150 baht, began with a pickup from our hotel at 8pm and ended at 6am the next morning on a side street in between nowhere and nothing. Had we shelled out and purchased the 350 baht option (7 more American dollars), we would have left our hotel around 9am and arrived on the mainland two hours later. It’s all about the “experience,” right?
The ferry provided “beds,” which were actually visibly dirty mats placed along the floor in a row, and blankets, which were where the mosquitoes laid their eggs, not a device for protecting against them. With all of its downsides, this trek across the sea allowed us to see a sky so black that the stars actually shone and the night seemed to come alive as we drifted off, the ocean rocking us to sleep.
We took a bus from this port town to Prachuap Khiri Khan, a province six hours north, and checked into Maggie’s guesthouse per Kevin’s earlier recommendation. Unable to find a single thai food stall open to serve us after a sleepless and foodless night on a boat, we turned desperate and found the nearest hotel. The chicken was almost surely cooked in sperm juice and, as Ben put it, the entire institution was stuck in the 80s. We vowed to never eat at a hotel again—even under such dire circumstances.
The next day we rented a car from the owner of the guesthouse, a manual pickup that would be our chariot for the afternoon. With a keen sense of direction but no tangible map, we found our way around the province hoping that each turn we took would take us in the right direction. Our first stop was a quick visit with a group of wild monkeys who allegedly caught a ride to Prachuap on a tuk-tuk from Bangkok. We swung by a beautifully carved wooden temple while searching for a military base and then made our way to the day’s main event: an elephant conservation center. An NGO worker who spoke virtually perfect English greeted us and explained we’d have to wait just a short while because the Governor of the province was on his way to the park to spot elephants—we’d all go together when he arrived. We waited, and waited, and waited…Three hours and one governor later we made our way to the viewing area where we peeked through binoculars to spot wild elephants and gaurs. The TV crews filming the Governor used us as props to show that white people do, in fact, visit national parks! We staged ourselves, smiled and pointed at imaginary animals and made our first (but not our last) appearance on Thai television that evening.
We hopped on the back of one of the worker’s pickups, eventually reached our car, and followed the TV crew back to the highway. The sun had gone down by then and no map or sense of direction would have helped us then.
Desperate for a slice of home, Ben demanded a trip to the one and only air conditioned joint in Prachuap, KFC. Cam ate her first meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken (in Thailand of all places) and Ben savored both his crispy chicken sandwich and some homemade massaman curry. The day was a grand success and we were all quite excited about our first time in Thailand’s capital. Bangkok was up next.
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