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Published: November 26th 2005
Russell - Well according to our travel agent we will be picked up at our hotel by the air-con, reclining seats super-bus to Phuket at 6pm. Bit of a worry as the hotel is down a side alley, but I assume they have a plan. They do - we walk to the end of the road. Around the corner, down the road, across a big juction, through some back streets, across a market and to the bus park. Thanks.
Anyway on we get and the bus is nice which it needs to be if we are to sleep on this 15 hour over-nighter. The bus sets off fine and I catch a last look at the streets of Bangkok by night. An hour and half later we are still moving through the city streets when I suddenly realise I recognise the place. All that walking had given me an insight into how the city works and we were quite clearly about 2 minutes walk from our hotel!!! An hour and a half and we had only gone around in a big circle! Think of the extra drinking time we could have had.
Anyway we are now off and into the night. The bus was pretty full and there had been some disagreements on seating but everyone was settled down now except those on the back of the bus. They were a group of high spirited 18 year olds who had basically decided it would be best to get completely drunk and pop twice the recommended amount of Valium into the bargain. Still it was good humoured but the inane arguements were starting to rub. I'm sure it is very important whether Justin Timblelake had sung on the Black Eyed Peas track but after you have heard a group of people argue about it for three hours straight it gets a bit much. (Lindsay - Plus everyone knows he did). Then the sick stops started. One of the girls was seriously pissed, as in can't stand up pissed and needs to get off at every opportunity to throw up. At one stop a cry went up that someone was left behind. The guy was clearly too drunk to notice his friend had moved a seat down. Interestingly no one else was that bothered about the prospect of leaving one of them behind. Eventually at about 2am someone snapped and asked them to shut up and let everyone sleep. After a few "why don't we just put up a sign saying 'boring bus here' ", they started to settle. Unfortunately the girl sitting behind Lins decided that she was uncomfortable and Lins would just have sit upright so she could have more leg room. Lins moved her seat a little way up to help her out but the precious little princess was just not happy and could not quite grasp the concept that there were other people in the world trying to sleep and she would have to compromise. Of course her seat was fully reclined but as she pointed out the person behind her hadn't complained yet. They argued for a while but Lins stood her ground, and got a few minutes having her seat kicked from behind like two year old for her trouble. But eventually even she got bored and we dropped off at about 3am (Lindsay - I also threatened to slap her face for her).
5:15am all the lights go on. "Wakey wakey time to to get off" Hey, are are we in Phuket already? I looked out and it was still dark. Very dark. There appeared to be a shack and nothing else around. This is a very small town. We got off and grabbed our luggage. A woman came over and asked where we were going. Phuket Town. "Wait over there the bus will be here at 8 o'clock. WHAT!!!! They never said anything about changing but the woman had already moved on. We were in the middle of nowhere in some open air cafe at 5 in the morning with nearly a three hour wait and the mozzies were starting to come out. We had less than two hours sleep and were not impressed. It was far too early to eat so we just waited.
At about 7:30 a mini-van arrived and asked for those going to Phuket. We were relieved to be on the move again but this new bus was not what we had paid for. There were 14 seats jammed into a van much smaller than the one that we came from Cambodia in. They jammed our stuff in the back and fortunately only about 8 of us appeared to be going to Phuket and no little princesses among them. It wasn't exactly comfortable but we had a bit of room. Until they went to the other cafes to pick everyone else up. Eventually we had all 14 seats filled and as we arrived at the last cafe there were another two people waiting for a lift. The driver motioned to us to start sharing seats. Now you have to understand that assuming 15 hours was a fair guess we still had 4 hours to drive and there was no way were going there in an overloaded minivan. So after a short argument (during which it seemed to me that the Thai owner of the cafe was suggesting to the driver that a few of us ride on the roof!) the driver gave in and made arrangements for the last two people to get the next minivan. Cramped into our van with no leg room at all we set off for the last leg of the journey.
Of course half way there we had to stop for breakfast at the cafe owned by the driver's mate but Lins and I had brought our supplies. At about 11:30am the minibus turned into the offices of a travel agent. Once more there was no town to be seen. "Everyone off, the bus stops here" Hang on we paid to go to Phuket Town. Oh yes it was explained to us but we didn't really want to go to Phuket Town did we? We wanted to go to the beach and for a small charge that's exactly what the travel agent could arrange. NO WAY! We have travelled for 17 and half hours most of which was in the most uncomfortable circumstances and we were not about to be forced to use the services of our driver's mate's travel agency. We paid to go to Phuket Town and that is where they would take us. We weren't the only ones feeling this way so the travel agent decided to summon a tuk-tuk to take us the rest of the way. It turns out we were about 5 mins from town and we made friends with the other traveller who had insisted on her ride to Phuket Town and traded stories about how unreliable the service was getting here.
The tuk-tuk stopped in the middle of town and was in no mood to explain where. Fortunately there is never a shortage of tuk-tuks only too willing to show you where you are and more importantly where they can take you. Once we knew where we were we declined their kind offers to go to their mate's cheap cheap guesthouse and headed to the one in the guide book described as "head and shoulders above the rest" - we needed pampering. We asked to see a room and were led through an outside corridor to what was a fairly rough room. By far the roughest we had seen and that's saying something. If you have ever seen film the The Beach you might have an idea of what this place looked like. The graffitti on the notice board saying "Warning! Bed bugs live here" really put me off though. We politely said we would think about it and moved on. A poster in reception had caught our eye and had the name of another guesthouse on it as a landmark. We went around the corner and saw that it was a huge modern hotel and clearly out of our price range. Still I was tired, I had a huge rucksack on my back, I looked like I had been dragged through a hedge backwards for 18 hours and I was going to ask anyway. The girl behind the desk took me completely by surprise by giving me a polite "wai" (two handed prayer motion meaning hello). I was almost expecting to be thrown out rather than warmly greeted. 800 Baht a night including breakfast made it cheaper than most of the places we have been in Thailand but it was considerably more expensive than the one we had just come from. Well having a look at the room wouldn't hurt. "It's perfect we'll take it" I said as soon as we walked in. Well it is only for one night....maybe two then we are going to the beach to sun ourselves.
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RussLins
Lindsay Clarke
Map
In order to help those who did RE rather than Geography GCSE I have put a map on this blog to show you all where we are in relation to the UK. I was just experimenting so it has appeared in a strange place but I hope it helps.