My long journey home

Finally I am home again after a long trip of 40 hours!

My trip back home starts on Tuesday morning. At 11 am I am picked up from my bungalow in Ao Nang by a Songthaeo and taken to the bus station of Krabi. There buses leave to different destinations. We receive our tickets and are told to wait. A German woman comes up to me and asks me and a young guy from Belgium if we want to play UNO with her. Furthermore we ask a guy from Canada if he want´s to join us; firstly he does not want to play because he doesn´t know UNO, but we explain him the rules of the card game and he is really enjoying himself and playing very well. We play til our bus leaves at 1:30 pm and have so much fun doing this - four people who did not know each other a couple of hours ago killing waiting time by playing cards together. 

We were expecting a bus, but it is only a little van which takes us somewhere about 5 km away and there we have to change into another bigger van. Our luggage is squeezed in underneath the seats and we are squeezed in as well. I have to sit on the seat in the rear, where it is kind of hard getting in, but I have a nice young couple as neighbours, coming from Brasil and Mexico and so we can have a nice Portugese/Spanish/English conversation.

We stop several times and load more people. In the end we are 13 people in the van, half of them being Thais, so it is not a typical tourist bus :) All of a sudden I hear an interesting noise from the seat in front and I find out that a hen and a rooster are travelling with us as well :)

After around 2,5 hours drive we arrive at a bus stop in Surat Thani und from there a songthaeo takes us to the train station, which is still a 30 minutes drive away. As there is still some time before our night train leaves the German woman and the Belgian guy and I have dinner together at a restaurant nearby. At about 6 pm I get into the train and look for my seat. I travel second class, however the night train is really good and we have more than enough space - on our seats as later in our beds as well.

My fellow traveller is a Thai woman and it turns out that she speaks German very well as she is married to a German man and living in Düsseldorf. She is very nice and we talk for a while. We leave the train station at 6:30 pm and around 7 the conductor comes and turns our seats into beds. Unlike our Austrian sleeping trains there are no compartments here, however the bed is very spacious and there are on each side two beds above each other and one can close every single bed with a curtain. I really enjoy the train ride and for me it could take even longer :)

At 7 am we arrive in Bangkok after a train ride of a little over 12 hours. I leave the train station for having breakfast and I am lucky to run into a place where I have the best pineapple pancake I ever had in Thailand together with very good coffee, a fun coffee house manager and a nice young man from France to talk to.

Then I take the subway and the airport line and arrive at the airport right in time for check in.

With Austrian Airlines I fly home to Vienna! My flight takes a little over 11 hours and at around 8 pm I am in the arms of my beloved husband at the airport of Vienna! 

During this trip I spent about 24 hours in planes, 13 hours on the train, about 30 hours in busses, about 20 hours on ships, and many hours on motorbikes, tuk tuks, taxis and the typical pick up cars called Songthaeos. But I love it, because besides meeting people from all over the world and talking in different languages one of the things I love most about traveling is the journey itself.

In the beginning I wrote about the packing and the financial challenge and I really sticked to it! There was no need to buy an additional bag and also in money terms I met my self set specifications. Thanks to the wonderful travel app TravelSpend I did not exceed my budget!

Maybe backpacking in Thailand is not the most adventurous thing one can do, however for me it was quite a big adventure. Going alone on this journey was already a big adventure itself - and it was filled with many small adventures and challenges like motorbiking or ziplining. But the most important challenge was to leave our comfortable and nice house and my loving husband and embark on a journey with little luggage all by myself. However, I believe that we only grow and develop further in terms of personality and character by leaving our comfort zone - and for me this is the most important conclusion of my trip.

So many of you followed me by reading my posts and watching my pictures - I thank you very much for accompanying me on my journey! It really made me very very happy to see how many of you were following me and I want to thank each and everyone of you from all my heart! Every day far away from home - knowing that you will follow my blog was a big support and really meant and still means a lot to me and I hope you enjoyed traveling with me this way as well! Thank you very much!

And now I have two days to relax before I go on my next trip on Saturday - however this time it is a job, as I will go to Cuba as a tour leader :)