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Published: March 29th 2013
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Haad Rin Beach
The Full Moon Party in full-swing! The Koh Phangan Full Moon Party. Oh dear. Well, I went, but unfortunately didn't conquer. Quite the opposite, in fact. There were hundreds of thousands of party-goers on Haad Rin beach - quite a sight. I had two buckets and that's where things went a little fuzzy. I vaguely remember vomiting in a bucket, and taking a motorbike taxi back to the resort. Apparently, Sophie was knocking on the door for some time and getting verbal abuse from me in response before I finally opened it. Bad times.
*Update: apparently, I had four buckets.*
I spent most of the next day in bed, mainly because going outside would've entailed putting on suncream and I simply couldn't be bothered. Plus, I was a little hungover.
And so brings me to our Thailand to Malaysia bus journey. We set out at 6:15am in a shared taxi to the port. We took the boat to Surat Thani. We took a non-air conditioned, open-windowed bus from the port to the city centre. That's where things got....crowded, shall we say? We were bundled onto a minibus with our bags basically piled wherever there was space, regardless of the need for leg room. As
Yes, we went there.
They seemed like a good idea at the time.... another passenger said: "Why do we have legs?!" We were cramped like that for about four or five hours, before reaching Hat Yai, having our passport numbers listed, and being placed on new minibuses. Luckily, there were not so many of us this time and we were able to feel our feet for the entire journey. Hooray! We did, however, waste time waiting and turning around to pick up who I can only assume we're 'private' passengers, organised under the table by the driver.
Reaching the Malay border, we disembarked and walked through passport control. Prior to this, our driver asked us all for 10 Baht. i asked why and he mumbled something about immigration. We refused to pay him, but others did. He told them it was to cover the cost of taking the bus through, but I think it was just a scam. We got back on the bus for a few minutes, then got off with our baggage to go through customs. This took a matter of minutes, then we got back on the bus and waited for one of the 'private' passengers. We waited. And waited. Then we waited some more. I think we were
Packed in like sardines!
Getting up close and personal with fellow passengers and luggage.... there for over an hour, and patience began to run thin. Turns out this guy had had "problems" coming through, although we never got to the bottom of what the 'problems' were.
Another two and a half hours on the road, and we reached George Town, having dropped off the private passengers en route (well, not exactly en route - we took detours). The driver was unable to find Ryokan Hostel, and much like the tuk tuk driver in Bangkok, told us to get out and find it. At about 10:30pm. We told him no, and that he must take us there. Turns out it was literally seconds away from where we'd stopped. We half-heatedly thanked the driver, went inside, dumped our bags and went out in search if food and an ATM.
We had a lovely meal at a pub on Upper Penang Road, although I think we could've been served shit and enjoyed it, given that we'd only snacked on nuts, crisps and crackers all day. I'd kept my fluid intake to a minimum, not knowing how often we'd stop for toilet breaks, so was also feeling a little dehydrated. Fun times.
We returned to the hostel, showered and zonked out.
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