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travelblogtalk

Visiting Rural Thailand – enjoy the silence

  1. Applying for a Myanmar (Burma) visa in Bangkok
  2. One night in Bangkok
  3. Visiting Rural Thailand – enjoy the silence
  4. Sleeping in a monastery on a mountain top in Hpa-An, Myanmar
  5. Overview of tourist hotspots in Myanmar (Burma)
  6. Naypyitaw – The official capital of Myanmar
  7. Being sick on the road
  8. The End of an Era – I’ve Sold My Motorbike and Left Vietnam
  9. Cambodia – First Impressions
  10. Koh Ta Kiev – Where the boat leaves from
  11. The Future of Sihanoukville, Cambodia and the Surrounding Areas
  12. What Were We Thinking (and other ramblings)

Dave and his place of residence

I had previously reached out to Dave from Dave’s travel corner who owns a house in rural Thailand in a small “village” (consisting of now only 3 houses) in Prachinburi province, about 2 hours drive east of Bangkok along route 304. Dave lives there with his wife Syy and when he is not in Thailand he is either at his base in California, or he is out travelling (to Antarctica just to name one he’s already got planned)

dave-office
Dave in his “office” beneath his house

The area in Thailand boomed over the last 5 years due to paper making business’s moving in which means there is now actually a city nearby and more than one place of accommodation. As a side-effect this also puts a certain smell down over the nearby area that probably takes some getting used to. Luckily neither the hotel I stayed at or Dave’s house had any smell when I was there. It is still a sleepy town and when I asked Dave what kind of people would just randomly drop by here, he answered “no one”.

So what do you do in a town like Dave’s

I arrived from Bangkok in the afternoon on a Friday and was due to leave two days later.

The town didn’t disappoint me and neither did Dave. There was no Eiffel tower or reclining Buddha to see but there was a fishing pond, a scooter drive to a nearby delicious noodle store, and some drone flying. Dave has made an excellent edit of the drone flying footage. We managed to crash it a few times but it survived and gave us some interesting footage of Thailand from the sky.

Finally, of course, I spent a lot of time talking to Dave about everything travel – blogging, travelling, packing, anecdotes from foreign countries and everything in between. Compared to this guy I’m a fledgling traveller barely having touched the world while Dave has somewhere around 130-150 countries under his west– he’s been going at it since 1996. So needless to say he had a lot of knowledge to drop on me.

Moving on

I had two very good days with Dave and Sai, hanging in the hammock and enjoying the serene life of rural Thailand. Especially after 4 hectic days in Bangkok, this was a welcomed break! I could easily have stayed a week more, just doing nothing and absolutely loving it. However, all good things must come to an end and Dave and Sai had to move on. After having pursued alternative methods to get to Myanmar by land we realised there was only one way and that was to go back to Bangkok and take a bus from there. At least I could share the first leg with Dave and Sai as they were heading to Bangkok as well.