I got to Chanthaburi on a roughly 4-hour bus ride from Battambang. Whilst waiting for a bus, at roughly the right time, a man turned up and the woman who had sold me the ticket pointed for me to go with him. I followed him and he took me to the bus.

During the journey, at one of the stops, one of the other passengers started talking to me as he wanted to practise his English. He helped me with directions and with the translations for words like ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in Thai. I thought these might come in useful, as the previous border crossing had shown some need for diplomacy.

Once at the border, everything was very streamlined and efficient. The Cambodian border police were very friendly and the Thai border police caused no problems at all. I got stamped-out of Cambodia, walked the roughly 1 Km between the borders and met the Thai border guard at his border station. He told me to go to two separate booths, one where a woman was waiting to give me a departure card and photocopy my passport and one where the original man was sitting, waiting to give me the stamp. I was the only one there, as far as I could tell and it was over very quickly.

I walked around the corner to the market, where a woman (who was just about to get on a motorbike) and a man (who was on the motorbike) were waiting. The woman offered to take me to her home town, where I could get a bus to Chanthaburi, for free. They seemed genuine, but having been in the country for only a few minutes, I decided to walk around and see what the options were for myself. As the man and the woman on the motorbike were saying, there didn’t appear to be any buses from the border, but I asked someone else, who was sitting in his cabin and he pointed me in the direction of a nearby restaurant. Here, a woman who spoke English, helped me by telling my how to get to Chanthaburi, giving me free water and flagging down her friend, who was going in that direction anyway. I got on the back of his moped and he took me to a checkpoint, where I waited for a bus.

A lot of friendly border guards were waiting around with M-16s and one of them helped me find a car to Chanthaburi. There was a casino in the space between the two borders (I think) and most of the traffic was going either to or from there. Several cars and buses stopped, but eventually we found one going to Chanthaburi. It contained a woman and two men, none of whom really spoke English, but they took me to Chanthaburi, which was about an hour away, for free.

In Chanthaburi I walked around until I found a hotel. I was able to find two, one of which was very expensive, so I stayed in the other one.

The next day I walked around the main part of the town, finding the river and a few nice back-alleys.

The day after I went to Bangkok, as I thought it might be a bit more exciting.