bus – soloflighted.com

No Ordinary Train Ride from Bangkok to Aranyaprathet

We took a train ride from Bangkok to Aranyaprathet so we could reach Siem Reap, Cambodia the cheapest way possible. On land, you can either take a bus or a train, the former is faster though more expensive. 200 Baht vs 48 Baht, it was a no-brainer for us since our funds were already depleted back in Cebu, Philippines.

Aranyaprathet is a district of Sa Kaeo Province in Thailand that borders Cambodia to the East. Riding the train was an experience that is foreign to me. Unless you include those small train rides in theme parks, I can say that I’ve never ridden this mode of transport before.

Bangkok Railway Station
Hua Lamphong

Hua Lamphong Train Station

Around 4am in Hua Lamphong Railway Station, we waited for the 5:55am train schedule by eating Thai food and buying snacks at a 7/11 convenience store. It was going to be a 6-hour ride, and we’ve been traveling and stopping from Cebu to Manila to Clark to Bangkok for over 24 hours. You can imagine how stressed I was considering that I wasn’t used to long journeys. But it would’ve been useless to give up knowing how far we’ve already come.

Station 6

The sign said it was an ordinary train going to Aranyaprathet. But after the whole traverse, there was nothing plain about it. In fact, it was one of the most notable experiences of the trip.

Ordinary Train? Didn’t see this one coming.

Still not yet done with my posts about my trip to Cambodia but I figured I’d post an entry about how we got back to Bangkok, Thailand from Siem Reap.

I received a couple of notifications from readers about how to travel from Siem Reap to Bangkok so I’ll post this one quick as it was also an easy trip.

Still at our hostel (Bousavy Guesthouse), we asked for directions on how to get back to Bangkok. We initially planned on following our original steps on how to get to Siem Reap via train. But when we asked the owner, he offered to arrange a bus trip to Bangkok. We immediately agreed to their offer when we learned how cheap it was to get back.

8 USD – Siem Reap to Bangkok – Travel Time (8-9 hours)

We bought our tickets directly at Bousavy, arranged our pick-up for the bus and just went through with the trip.

back at the Cambodia border

Compared to the Bangkok to Siem Reap trip, we cut down our transportation expenses by almost half! We asked the owner of Bousavy Guesthouse why their bus line only has buses to Bangkok. He said that rules are more complicated from Bangkok to Siem Reap compared to Siem Reap to Bangkok.

lining up at the Cambodia Immigration center

We arranged a tuk tuk pick-up to the bus station and at around 9am, we were already inside the shuttle going to the border. I sat beside a Spanish woman and practiced whatever PR skills I had left.

On Travel – a free travel magazine in Malaysia.

We were headed back to Cebu from Malaysia. It was our last day and we were waiting for the Star Shuttle bus to take us to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) in Kuala Lumpur.

At the bus station, we grabbed some free magazines to keep ourselves busy and to kill time.

on the lower-left corner…

September 06, 2010
Hong Kong Trip Day 5: Ocean Park

This was our second to the last day in Hong Kong and we planned on going to Ocean Park for it. We already bought tickets ahead through Ate Yolly the other day. It was convenient for us because we didn’t have to wait in line or scout through other booths in order to get an entrance pass. What’s also nice is that we got a discount since we purchased it from her.

clownfishes

Woke up and then headed to the Marketplace by Jasons in iSQUARE (a mall near our hostel) in order to buy some snacks which already served as our breakfast for the day. I bought a sandwich and some cranberry juice and ate along the way.

juice and sandwich (13 HKD)

We took the MTR from Tsim Sha Tsui to Admiralty and rode a bus (629 route) that went directly to Ocean Park. It took us some time to locate the bus since we didn’t know which side we had to take. After a couple of questions from the people nearby, we were able to settle in. I think the ride took about 45 minutes so I still had some time to rest and take a nap. I was tired from the activities we did the previous day in Hong Kong Disneyland.

bus terminal and 629 bus

We arrived at Ocean Park and one of their staff took my camera and told us to pose. I was surprised by how intrusive the staff was of our space but he said that he only wanted to take our picture using my camera. He also took a picture using his camera and gave us tickets to claim it at the booth near the entrance.

When we got to the booth, another staff offered us key chains with our pictures on it. We were amazed at how fast the processing of the key chain and pictures were. But we didn’t bother asking for the price because we knew how theme parks are when it comes to prices of their souvenir items.

Ocean Park!

September 04, 2010
Macau Side Trip: Venetian Hotel, City of Dreams, Grand Lisboa

A tour around Macau’s Hotel Casinos.

I’m having a hard time separating this entry as there’s just so many places in Macau that we visited even if we spent it only for a day. That’s why I’m probably going to have to break the Macau Trip into other blog entries to cover the places we’ve gone to.

The Venetian Macau

Woke up early in order to prepare for our trip to Macau. We decided to push through with our plan as we needed to cover as many destinations and tourist spots in Hongkong while we’re still there. Although it rained the previous day, we were bent on at least getting to a good place in order to scratch of one of the locations in our itinerary.

The weather was humid but we proceeded to taking the ferry from Hong Kong to Macau. We ate breakfast first in order to fill ourselves for the day. We visited a Burger King store near the Tai San Guesthouse. Cindy and Logan ordered a bagel meal while I ordered a sandwich at half the price – really had to cut down on my costs – hehe.

Burger King breakfast in Hongkong

Places we visited in Macau:
The Venetian Hotel
City of Dreams
Grand Lisboa

September 3, 2010
Hong Kong Trip Day 2: World Trade Center and Times Square in Causeway Bay, Wan Chai

It rained on our second day in Hong Kong and it was declared as Storm Signal Number 1 which was such a bummer since we were raring to go out.

Designer Tram at Causeway Bay

Although we slept late in the morning, I woke up early to find some food for breakfast. From our hostel at the Tai San Guesthouse, I went to iSQUARE which is just a couple of blocks away. Initially, I thought iSQUARE was an office owned by Apple; later did I found that it is one of Hongkong’s skyrise malls.

I went there because I was looking for a supermarket to buy some grocery items: water bottles and chips; as well as some hair gel because we realized we weren’t in our best look when we saw our pictures the previous day. hehe.

Marketplace by Jasons at iSquare mall

Places we visited:
iSquare Mall
World Trade Center and Times Square in Causeway Bay
Wan Chai Computer Center
The Spaghetti House

September 2, 2010
Hongkong Trip Day 1: Tsim Sha Tsui and Mongkok Computer Center

It was a good thing Cindy, the ever-reliable researcher, read through a lot of information online especially on PinoyExchange.com (PEX). She told me that all the necessary details on what to do, where to go and how to get there is already laid out so there was no need for us to hire a travel agency to create an Itinerary for us.

shops and streets at 10pm!

I woke up and saw my friends, Cindy and Logan, still surfing the net with their laptops. I slept for a couple of hours at the Hong Kong International Airport which was a good thing as I had more energy to stroll around the place when we got to our hostel.

Train Tickets to purchase Octopus cards

6am, at the airport; we went to the center where we could buy some Octopus cards for our MTR (Mass Transit Railway) fares. This proved to be a wise choice as it’s a very convenient way to travel and pay for your fare when going to different towns.

Octopus cards – check out wikipedia for more information about it: Wikipedia – Octopus Card

Places we visited:
Tsim Sha Tsui
Tai San Guesthouse
Avenue of the Stars
1881 Heritage
Mongkok Computer Center

To Dumaguete and back

I’m tired from another Dumaguete trip. After the four hour bus ride from Santander to Cebu, I went to the office to send some reports and went to Informatics in SM City Cebu to continue my short-term class. Schedule is definitely hectic and my body is still tired from the different activities that we did over … Read more

No Ordinary Train Ride from Bangkok to Aranyaprathet

Cambodia Trip: Shuttle Bus from Siem Reap to Bangkok, Thailand

Picture on a Travel Magazine in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Hong Kong Trip: Ocean Park

Macau Side Trip: Venetian Hotel, City of Dreams, Grand Lisboa

Hong Kong Trip: World Trade Center & Times Square in Causeway Bay, Wan Chai

Hongkong Trip: Tsim Sha Tsui and Mongkok Computer Center

To Dumaguete and back