Bangkok’s Mo Chit New Bus Terminal was exactly what you would expect from a major city bus station.

Chaos.

Organised chaos, perhaps, but chaos nonetheless.

I am not entirely sure why it still has the word New in the name. I am fairly certain it has been there for years, and there is very little about it that feels particularly new.

But that is its name.

And from here buses and minivans head off to almost every corner of Thailand.

The place was heaving.

People rushed in every direction carrying an extraordinary assortment of luggage.

Bags.

Boxes.

Baskets overflowing with food.

And, in one memorable case, a man attempting to wrestle an enormous television onto a bus.

People shouted.

Horns sounded.

Drivers called out destinations.

Passengers disappeared through doors at the last possible moment.

And somehow, in amongst all of this, it worked.

We collected our tickets and headed towards our bus.

There was immediate relief when we discovered it was an actual bus.

Well, almost.

It looked rather like somebody had taken a full-sized coach and chopped the back off it, but that was still infinitely preferable to a minivan.

Minivans in Thailand have an unfortunate habit of containing roughly twice as many people as you would think physically possible.

Usually with luggage.

Lots of luggage.

So our slightly abbreviated bus looked positively luxurious.

The journey south took around five hours and, before long, we were arriving in Prachuap Khiri Khan.

P.K.K., as we had come to call it, was not new to us.

We had stopped here the previous year while travelling north through Thailand and had liked it almost immediately.

It was relaxed.

It sat right on the sea.

It had enough going on to keep things interesting without feeling as though half the planet had arrived there at the same time.

When we left last time, we had promised ourselves we would come back for longer.

And now we had.

Our guesthouse was a lovely family-run place in an old building right in the middle of town.

The Thai family running it could not have been nicer, and within about five minutes of arriving we knew we were going to like staying there.

This was to be home for ten days.

After that, the plan was to move about forty minutes farther down the coast to a house we had rented for a month in a small village right on the beach.

The owner was a man called Ronnie.

More on Ronnie shortly.

For the moment, though, we settled back into Prachuap Khiri Khan.

We wandered around town.

We revisited places we remembered from our previous stay.

We found a few new ones.

And in the evenings we headed down towards the waterfront.

The road running along the beach came alive with the night market and walking street.

Pink market tents appeared.

Food stalls lit up.

People wandered between them buying dinner, snacks, fruit and all manner of things they probably had no intention of buying when they arrived.

It was busy without being overwhelming.

Exactly our sort of place.

Most evenings developed a pleasant routine.

Drinks at Timber Hut Café while the light faded over the bay.

Dinner at the Greek restaurant next door.

Or perhaps the Japanese restaurant instead, which served genuinely excellent Japanese food and became another favourite.

Lunch was usually something much simpler.

A little hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant.

Plastic chairs.

No fuss.

Excellent food.

The sort of place where you point at something, hope for the best and end up eating better than you would in a restaurant charging ten times as much.

Everything was going very nicely.

Then, around day five, I decided it might be sensible to contact Ronnie.

We were due to move into his beach house shortly and I wanted the check-in details.

I sent a message.

Nothing.

I waited.

Still nothing.

The message had not even been read.

I sent another.

Again, nothing.

This was becoming slightly concerning.

The house was fairly remote and we had no particular desire to travel forty minutes down the coast carrying all our luggage only to discover either that somebody else was living there or, worse, that the house existed only in the optimistic imagination of an Airbnb listing.

After several attempts to reach Ronnie without success, I contacted Airbnb.

They tried too.

Ronnie remained impressively unavailable.

Eventually Airbnb agreed that this was probably not an ideal arrangement and cancelled the booking.

Our money was refunded.

Which was good.

We also no longer had anywhere to live for the next month.

Which was less good.

We extended our stay in Prachuap Khiri Khan for a few more days while we worked out what to do next.

An internet search of the surrounding area did not reveal very much.

Then Bangkok appeared.

A brilliant apartment.

Available for a month.

And, rather conveniently, discounted by fifty percent.

We looked at each other.

Bangkok it was.

It was not remotely the plan.

But then plans are really only something to give you somewhere to start.

A few days later we packed our bags once again, said goodbye to Prachuap Khiri Khan and climbed onto another bus.

Back north.

Back to Bangkok.

Apparently we weren’t quite finished with it yet.