A Bangkok taxi journey.

We liked the taxi's in Bangkok! You got in them, told the driver where to go, they put on their meter and drove you to your destination. We then paid what the meter said, got out and went on our merry way.

"But that sounds like a normal taxi journey" we hear you say. Alas in South East Asia, or India or generally anywhere we have been taxi or Tuk-Tuk journeys can involve 5 minutes of haggling followed by a journey around the most expensive tourist shops and travel agents which conveniently pay big commissions to the drivers. We inevitably pay more than we should and frustrates us beyond belief at times.

So when we got into a taxi as we left Bangkok to head south we were in a very confident mood. We asked the driver to take us to the train station and even showed him our Thai instructions written out for us by our hostel. He looked at it, appeared to understand, handed the note back and pulled out into the traffic. We sat back and chatted away and then realised that there were two things wrong.

1. The day we were leaving also happened to be the Thai Queens birthday which meant lots of traffic.

2. We were going the wrong way!

We took out the map and had a look. He appeared to be taking us on a long loop around the city centre, sticking to the motorways, which were moving a lot faster than the city traffic which was worse due to the good ol' queens celebrations. We calmed ourselves and we had left 1hr 20mins to do a 15-20min, 6km journey so there was still time.

We started to get a little worried when the road seemed to go on for ever and we still were not heading back to the city. Eventually we did but then the driver pulled over and pointed at a sign as if we had reached our destination. We insisted that this motorway slip road wasn't the railway station to which he gave us a confused look. We looked up the Thai for train at which point we all began to realise that there had been a serious mis-communication. To make matters worse the driver then refused to take us to the train station, giving us some excuse that he did not have enough fuel. We pleaded with him to move ASAP as it was now 1825 and our train was leaving at 1830 but to no avail. We just got out and hailed another taxi, this time making sure our destination was crystal clear and headed back into the heart of Bangkok.

The next 45 minutes basically passed in silence as both Louise and I sat in the back of the taxi praying for our train to be delayed. Our new driver seemed to sense our stress levels as he probably broke a few traffic laws getting us there as quickly as possible. Eventually we pulled into Hulumphong station, we hurriedly paid our driver, ran into the station and BEHOLD!!! Our train was still on the board, we rushed to the platform and it was still there having been delayed for 40 minutes, exactly how long we needed it too.

Some of you probably don't believe that God exists, or that prayers are answered, or even that God cares about the little things.

We do!