(Daniel)  The 4 ferry crossings went by quickly this time, a nice Dutch couple commented on our Expedition, saying that they would love to do something similar.  Dry weather and relatively little traffic meant that we were able to race to Koh Kong in a record time, under 4 hours.

At the border,  the Cambodian officials made a few problems for us to solve, meanwhile the people who had attempted to force the lock on the Wolf surrounded us asking for money again.  I managed to take control of the situation, getting the checkpoint guards themselves to stamp the document.  No time for messing around now. 

The Thai officials were much more efficient, but when I handed my British passport across, the guard flicked through the pages carefully before asking why I had no Cambodian visa stamp.  I explained that I had two passports, and that the visa was stamped in My Irish passport.  He asked for the Irish passport, which I handed over aswell.  Inside he saw that I had already entered and exited Thailand a total of six times this year.  Twice the amount which I thought was due to me.  Infact the Thai authorities had actually made a point of telling me that I could not come back to Thailand until late September, this was on my exit only a few weeks ago.

I heard the Thai word for cheat banded around a few times.  Then took the opportunity to  switch to speaking in Thai, they would loose a little face from my understanding, and after all I really don’t have any intention of living in Thailand illegally.  The effect was better than I had hoped for.  The senior officer, who had just walked over to see what was happening, seemed thrilled that I could speak with such polite dialect and unusual words.  He made no mention of his staff’s words, but picked up the passport and exclaimed that the sum of all days in Thailand was actually only about 75.  Which would allow me a further 15 days stay.  The Irish Passport was stamped, we were back into Thailand!

After filling out the Carnet docs, I got on the road,  Nii got straight on the phone.  She got some numbers for shipping companies and began to contact them.  An initial estimate came through from one company, $4000, I laughed it off certain that this figure could only be grossly incorrect.   Nick called after a while, he had got some numbers for agents in Bangkok, we took the numbers to try and reach them en route.  The next five hours was spent on the phone to any shipping company that we could get numbers for, I had to stop twice to buy credit top ups for the phone.  Nick called companies from the UK, Nii frantically called more from the Wolf, she patiently listened as after each call I tried to give her instruction in the fine art of ‘not getting brushed off’.  At 4pm the phones just switched off.  Thai office hours were strictly enforced, forcing us to give up for the day.  A few companies were now working on shipping quotes, including two air freight companies who seemed to think that they would be cheaper as well as faster.

I have hardly put a foot wrong on long journeys, but despite having two sat nav systems a compass and a map, I managed to take a wrong road now, about 180kms from Bangkok, After heading 100kms in the wrong direction, I realised that I was heading along the same road that I had taken to my entry point to Cambodia.  I had no idea how it had happened, I had to stop to cool down for several minutes, I was furious with myself.  It occurred to me than that I hadn’t eaten anything, all day.  Which tends to leave me in a pretty unstable mood.  We bought some fresh fruit, Rambutan and Mangostine, as we drove on the problem mood died down.  However, I didn’t fancy Bangkok traffic, not to mention trying to find a hotel at night, so I drove back down the road that we had taken, heading another 100kms to Chonburi.  Nii and I checked into a hotel, we ate downstairs before going to bed.  As I fell asleep I thought about shipping, money, borders, customs, wasting time, and all the down sides to vehicle based Expeditions and I realised.  This is what it costs, this is the price of the adventure, just grin and bear it.  Tomorrow would be another chance to make things happen.   

PREVIOUS |  NEXT