We started our drive to Bang Saphan on Saturday morning at 7:00. The start of a 5-day weekend, we knew that there would be plenty of company on the roads and had steeled our nerves, laying in a basket of snacks and packing the iPod charger.
Located 385 kilometers south of Khrungthep, Bang Saphan is at the southern end of Prachuap Khiri Khan province, the same one in which Hua Hin is located. Another further south and we’d officially leave Central Thailand and be in the South.
The road was two lanes in each direction, and generally in good condition. Except for a little spot of construction. Well, two little spots of construction, each about 10 km long and one of which involved one whole side of the road being shut down and all the traffic had to share the other side.
As you can imagine, traffic was a teensy bit heavy.
What would normally be about a four-and-a-half hour trip stretched to about seven, plus an hour for lunch and breaks.
Still, it could have been worse. Tawn was expecting ten hours.
Along the way we saw all sorts of crazy things on the road:
Above: Not sure if this is a pickup truck or a spare axle being carried along… Below: Most everyone drove a pickup truck and in addition to the five or six or seven people squeezed into the cab, it was common to see two or three or seven sitting in the bed of the truck. In the hot sun for hours and hours.
Above: During Songkhran people like to splash your car (and you) with water and a talcum-like power. This clever driver preemptively covered his entire car with a pair of big eyes on the front and wear windscreens providing (some) visibility. Below: As we got further from the city, we started seeing signs of country life such as a truck of cattle and a huge stack of hay. No, the hay was not directly in front of the cattle, although that would have been funny.
Below: At one long traffic jam, we noticed this building alongside the road that appears to have been taken over by ivy.
Finally, a reminder that Songkhran is the most dangerous period on Thai roads. In the five days from Friday to Tuesday, there were 3,537 road accidents, 3,992 injuries, and 276 deaths. While there has been a big increase in enforcement efforts in the past few years, this number has remained very high and, sadly, so many of the deaths are alcohol-related. More about that in my next post.
christao408 
The statistics are very scary!
I look forward to reading the rest of your Bang Saphan trip journal.
Makes this look normal!!
A huge number of Thais travel back & forth to visit families during that period, that contributes to the high rate of accident?
@curry69curry – Definitely the high number of people on the road is a factor, but it is the amount of drunk driving that really impacts the numbers. Sadly, the slogan here is “Don’t Drive Drunk”, rather than “Don’t Drink and Drive”. We all know how well people judge their own sobriety.