Buses and Lost Cash in Bangkok

At 7:30, we checked out and headed for the bus stop to find out that buses left every hour on the half hour so we'd just missed one. I ran to get us some 7-11 breakfast pastries and a ham and cheese that I later found out Ryan was slowly growing sick of. It was good we were there early as the van was quite full. We sat in the front row to make sure our bags didn't take up seats this time. Another French backpacker joined our row soon after.

The journey was standard with one bus station stop between us and the destination. In Ubon, we headed to the only bus there en route to Bangkok and snagged spacious front row tickets. They played Hollywood movies in Thai during the drive: Transformers 1 and 3, Escape Plan then a Thai comedy game show where the contestants would be attacked by water, whipped cream or projectiles while trying to complete tasks like describing an object for the other to guess it or Pictionary where the other team got to modify the original drawing. They also wore ridiculous and colourful costumes during the skits.

We didn't get a lunch break, but I bought some BBQ eggs with seasoning at one of the bus stops. Supper was at a stop where I got shuffled around the food line due to communication issues. All I wanted was plain rice and a fried egg, both at different stalls apparently. We also bought some pretty awful mango. When we went outside, our bus was missing, but some people confirmed they were also on the Ubon to Bangkok bus. The buses seemed to be driving off to get a bus-wash nearby and sure enough ours came back.

Around Khao Yai area, it was nine thirty at night so I called the guesthouse we'd booked just to confirm we could check in at such a late hour. The guy had no issues with it and gave us directions. Traffic continued to be quite slow.

We arrived in Bangkok around 11 pm, and lined up with the Thais for a meter taxi (not one of the ones where the English speaking drivers approach you) to Sarawak road until we got near the address number. We got a little lost on foot after but a security guard walked us to the guesthouse and we were able to check in.

Once we arrived in our room, we counted our money and realized that we were short 1000 baht. As we recalled, Ryan had went to pay with 2000 baht. The receptionist asked for change and kept one of the thousands, then when we gave him the change amount we also included the other thousand. Ryan went down to talk to him about it and he double checked the books and denied that it had happened.

We did tallied up our expenses again, thinking we'd made the mistake, but down to every last piece of fruit we bought and a few hundred baht flex room in case we forgot something, we couldn't account for the missing thousand since our last bank withdrawal. It was too bad really, for an extra 1000 baht ($33), we could have gotten a much nicer room that didn't have filthy shared bathrooms. I was starting to see how people could not enjoy their time in the city I had enjoyed calling home two years ago.

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