Day 10 & 11 - Kanchanaburi Creams

We're sat at the airport, filling the 4 hours until our Chiang Mai flight. Thankfully, we have a puzzle book, cards, and the all-important Kindle. It was touch and go whether we'd actually get here today. We had booked a minibus yesterday with Toi's Tours (opting to give a competitor to Good Times our business, since the lady running it was very smiley whilst Good Times appeared to be the Tesco of tour operators, ad didn't have the trip we wanted a few days back). Great, we thought - we can relax now and just hop on the bus today. We were woken at 7:30 by the woman who had travelled down the road to our guesthouse and had a frantic look on her face (according to Gilly anyway, I was basically still asleep..).

The minibus wasn't running due to the floods.
Crap. How can we get to the airport?
You could take a taxi.
For a 3.5 hour journey...how much would that be?
1800 baht (£36)...

...which was 800 more than the minibus. Not outrageous, but to put it into context, two nights' stay in our Chiang Mai guesthouse is only 700. We had no option, of course, luckily our budgeting included a fair amount of contingency for emergencies like this. We'll just have to eat at some more street vendors for a couple of nights to get back on track, and the food is so good anyway, it's not exactly a hardship.

Speaking of food, we avoided the Jolly Frog guesthouse in Kanchanaburi due to a number of recent reviews mentioning bedbugs. However, we went there for some drinks last night and watched a fundraising band comprising mainly children play (really well) in aid of Baan Dada children's home, Maybe I should ease off the XBox when I get back and pick up the guitar that's been gathering dust for 8 years. We then went back today for lunch, and it was huge, filling, delicious and cheap. Even if you don't stay there, you can do a lot worse for mealtimes.

I mentioned in a previous post that ants are not our friend. This turned out to be an understatement after I got bitten three times on one foot and twice on the other. These bites aren't painful, but by the gods do they itch. Of course, the bites are located exactly where my sandals rub against my feet, meaning I'm in an itchy stupor every time I walk. I've smeared Anthisan cream all over the bites, and can only hope that reapplying it every few hours will sort them out. The ants here are practically indestructible. Gilly thought she'd killed one by squashing it this morning, but a minute later it started moving again. She smashed it to a pulp with some tissue against the table, opened the tissue and it was STILL ALIVE. I think they must have some sort of metal exoskeleton or something. I wager if you threw one into the fire it would melt into a pool of quicksilver before reforming again, like a goddamn Terminator.

Ice creams here are lovely, and there's so much more variety than the UK. This is probably due to our summer lasting 4 days, but there's definitely a market for black cherry Cornettos back home.

Looking forward to Chiang Mai, it's smaller than the capital and supposedly a lot more laid back too.