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Published: April 13th 2007
The local bus
..view from inside...doesn't look too bad! We were told that the bus to Surat Thani would leave Khao Lak at 9am. We were getting a little worried at 9.20am when a local bus turned up and a man swung out from the door and asked where we were going. After establishing that this was the bus we got on.....this was the first time we had done a long journey on a local bus but as all the doors and windows were open, it was pretty breezy when the bus set off. Very cheap too!
The conductor then came and said (or rather said it in a way so that we understood what he was trying to say) that as the journey would be two hours the bus would be stopping for a food break.
What was supposed to be a ten minute break ended up being around 45 minutes! And it was so hot in the bus! But we finally moved on. This bus seemed to stop at every place possible! At one stop some people got on and then shortly after we stopped at a police security check gatepost. The policeman came on and starting barking questions at people and then ordered off
the people who had just got on (from what we could make out, we think it had something to do with ID cards as one of the woman had hers but her husband didn't so they were ordered off)....the policeman was quite scary I have to say but he didn't give us one look so we knew we were okay.
We probably arrived at Surat Thani around 1.30pm. There we were told we needed to get another bus to the ferry pier to catch the ferry to Koh Phangan. This was a minivan which had some form of air conditioning so we didn't suffer so much! We managed to get on the ferry 5 minutes before it departed.
The ferry journey was around 3.5 hours and was mind-numbingly boring! We arrived at Koh Phangan (at Thong Sala) at around 7.30pm to be told that we couldn't get to the Sanctuary that night as it was too dark (the Sanctuary can only be reached by boat). So we stayed somehere up the west coast, but can't remember where!
The next day, we made our way to The Sanctuary, which was along the east coast around Hat Thian. The
View from the ferry
..is that Koh Phangan? sea was quite rough so we were told that the boat wouldn't be able to go all the way, we would have to walk some of it. And it was choppy! The motor boat really did feel the force of the waves and I found myself landing back down with a bump after every wave.......it was funny after a while!
When we reached the next strip of beach we then had to walk, with our back packs, round the shore (but going upwards) to the Sanctuary....it took about 15 minutes but felt longer what with our packs and walking at the hottest time of the day!
The Sanctuary is situated in a secluded bay and it is very pretty. The place is not bad either, but the food and drinks were much more expensive, having to be transported to the island by boat. James and I did one yoga class which was good but we found that everything was quite expensive. However we met a nice Australian couple and an American guy - we may try and meet up with the Australians when we get to Sydney.
After 3 nights here, James and I decided it was
time to move on to Koh Tao, the place for diving in Thailand. Jay and Eva decided to stay.
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