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Published: January 30th 2009
The Illegal Bus
Feel free to check out the credentials....OK so this is going to be a short one....
Basically the most horrendous journey I have ever had the misfortune of taking. 20 hours, yes 20 hours, in a coach where my legs didn't even fit behind the seat in front. I must say im getting mightly tired of having to bend down to see in the mirror and being so squished all the time! Thai people are tiny and totally discriminate against us 6footers of the world!
So after being led through a backstreet market, through a thai boxing ring and along a busy road, we arrived at the bus. We climbed aboard and thought Shhhhit! not nice! We had locked our bags up and had all our valuables under our clothes as we had heard that tiny thai men hide in the hold of the bus and pick through all the luggage.
We stopped somewhere in the middle of no where. We were hungry but all the people sold were dried fish guts...not appetising. At this point we met a Finnish family who purported to be Cannibals. This journey was a hoot.
After this point, not only could i not sleep because of the
cramp and smelll, I was also scared I was going to wake up with a man from Finland gnawing on my ankle. This really was the journey from hell.
At around 6am...bearing in mind we left Bangkok at about 6pm....three men boarded the bus with flashlights. They claimed to be tourist police, I wasn't really keen to believe them since their Tourist Police shirts were sponsored by a local pizza restaurant. People started showing them their passports and documents. Laura and I kept quiet and managed to avoid their attention. No way was I giving this sheisters anything!
Soon after this, the bus was driven down a dark, narrow road. We were convinced we were going to be shot! We discovered that we were in Surat Thani...great for people travelling to Koh Samui etc...but not so great for us! We still had so far to go!
They unloaded us from the bus and we waited around for a couple of hours. Several rumours and accusations floated around....all the bags had been broken into....the driver didnt have a licence....the company was bogus! oh what fun this was! We appeared to be at some sort of tourist police outpost..however
the organiser of the trip on our bus managed to have a shower and change her clothes. The depths to which these people scam you is unreal. We just kept quiet and waited for news of someone coming to get us.
As we waited we befriended two kiwi boys, they were good banter, and we were confident that they could protect us should the family from Finland get hungry!
At around half 8 a bus for Koh Lanta came. Unfortunately the kiwi boys were going to Koh Samui so we had to board a mini bus with the Finnish Cannibals. This day just couldnt get better! After a long journey down south and a dubious ferry crossing we arrived in Koh Lanta and grabbed the first available bungalow! It felt like heaven on earth...in reality it was a bamboo shack! haha!
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