A conversational travel vlog (Nate and Kara Buchanan) documenting a multi-leg overland journey from Koh Tao to Chiang Mai. This chunk covers departure from Koh Tao, a faster ferry crossing, an eight-hour bus ride to Bangkok with a roadside lunch stop and a brief delay, a rushed transfer by taxi to catch a planned 10:00pm overnight train, and the eventual decision to ride third-class for ~14 hours (no sleeper/AC). Practical details mentioned: they paid an extra $8 for nicer ferry/bus service, a non-metered taxi tried to charge 250 baht, and the planned Chiang Mai arrival (if train made) was ~11:00am the next morning. Tone is informal and light-hearted.
Questions this video answers
$8
About 8 hours
10:00pm (planned)
About 11:00am the next morning
Third class (approx. 14 hours, no sleeper/AC)
Chapters
Last morning for gas station coffee.
Bye bungalow.
Nate learned a new strategy. Diving.
No thanks.
The scuba diving squat.
We have a very long journey ahead. We're planning to distract ourselves with unhealthy food.
This thing is hauling. It's like 10 times faster than our last boat.
Thankfully, everybody who was showing up on our last boat got some grammar.
That only took like an hour and a half. The last one took three hours. The seat was like glass. It was fantastic. And nobody threw up.
Oh, so close.
We made it to land.
So much better than last time. Thank you. What time does the bus leave? 1 o' clock and it is now 12 o'. Clock. So we have time to eat.
Yes.
Perfect.
Next up, bus from here to here. You should get here at 8:30pm.
On T shirt.
Bus number 2.
1245. 1245.
Take a pink sticker.
I'm not letting you put this one on me.
Lunchtime.
Ranched out.
The usual.
Rice and noodles.
Just made it on the bus. It is about 12:30 and we have an eight hour bus ride to Bangkok.
Way nicer than the one that we took down here.
No boats.
Cross mountain fingers. So we won't get dropped off in the middle of the road. We paid an extra $8 to ride the nicer bus and the nicer ferry. So far. It's been like the greatest $8 that we spent this entire trip. Seriously, we don't usually go out of our way to give travel tips on this vlog, but if you're going overland from Bangkok to Koh Tao, take the ferry and bus company that starts with an L.
That one. Not the one that starts with an S.
At 10 o', we're supposed to catch an overnight train to Chiang Mai.
Keyword, supposed to take.
I didn't want to book it in advance because I don't trust these buses being on time. So there's no guarantee that we're going to make the train tonight. If we make the train, we should get to Chiang Mai at about 11am tomorrow morning.
And we do not have a place to stay the first night.
We have a place to stay the next six night thanks to our new.
Friends Ben and Kate.
About three hours into the trip, our first stop and we haven't been thrown off in the middle of the road yet. So say this is going well.
I have no idea what these places are.
They are so strange. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's just this big open place with no doors and all these food stalls. Just wait for people to pull up on these buses to Eat. I guess.
They're so random.
All right.
Yells at everybody.
I don't know what they're yelling about.
Back on the road.
On the road again.
We just pulled over to the side of the road. Not a good sign.
False alarm I think.
Smells as though a smoke break occurred.
About 25 minutes behind schedule. It's almost 9 o'. Clock. I'm really glad I didn't book the 10pm night train because I would be stressing out right now.
But it could have been a bad decision as well because we still don't.
Know when we're sleeping.
Hello? Hello? No thanks. We just finished our eight hour bus ride. It is now 9 o'. Clock. We have an hour to get to the train station to catch our hopefully overnight train to Chiang Mai. The first.
So loud.
We found a nice, nice slow old looking taxi driver who's gonna take us to the train station so hopefully we can catch our train alive.
Train station. Train station.
You know.
Train stat.
Okay.
One of home. Yes.
Here we go.
Hoping for the best, we opted to pay a little more for the cab instead of taking a local bus in hopes that would get us to the train station quicker and we'd have a better chance at catching the overnight train.
I'm attempting to use Google Maps to see if we're heading in the right direction.
That little arrow seems to indicate a good, good sign.
The traffic is not a good sign.
I think we found.
We're not the only ones.
The taxi driver that didn't have a meter tried to charge us 250baht to ride to the train station. That meter taxi just cost us seven. We don't know if there's gonna be any tickets available. We're hoping for a sleeper car but at this point we'll take.
Yes.
What's.
How much? They only have third class. Are we doing it?
What are our other options?
Go get a hotel.
Go get a hotel.
I mean is it a seat?
So no. No beds. You wanna do it?
I don't care.
You need to make a decision.
Why do I have to make the decision?
I guess I'd rather have an extra day in Tian Wah. Okay. And stay here. Yeah. This is going to be a minute.
And this is home for the next 14 hours.
I should have booked in advance. Made it with about 15 minutes to spare. I was scared that I was going to be throwing $40 down the drain by booking the sleeper car in advance because our bus wouldn't make it here. They didn't have any more sleeper car tickets when we showed up. So now we're stuck in third class for 14 hours with no conditioning.
And this tiny seat.
Can'T wait.
At least you have pad thai.
It'll be a memorable experience.
Sam.
I think I busted my lip with this thing with my pillow, but there's a hard bar. Sorry.
