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Published: November 10th 2009
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Before I start on our travels to Ko Pha-Ngan, I forgot one Bangkok story, which I've rightly been told off for. I mean what was I thinking? One of the highlights of Bangkok was the fish-foot-massage. As weird as this sounds, it is. To keep it simple, a very large fish tank that has been adapted to allow one to stick their feet in with relative ease i.e. whilst sitting down. The 100's of 'Dr Fish' then proceed to nibble away at all of the dead skin on your feet, which has to be said, is at first, a very bizzare sensation, however one that you can just about coupe with - for anyone who's interested, refer to the pictures for our 2nd blog 'Arrived...'
With that out of the way, back to our Train, Bus & Boat travels to our desired destination Ko Pha-Ngan (via Surat Thani). As I finished in our last blog, Dean & I had just secured our tickets to make our way south for the full moon party & thanks to our successful negotiation & my "beautiful eyes", we had done so at a reasonable price - with out the assistance of our good
friend Steve. Anyway, we made our way to Bangkok train station, with the intention of going via public transport, however, this quickly changed when we realised how much more complicated it would make the trip given the Bangkok afternoon traffic, so we negotiated & hired a private mini bus to the station. And, thanks to a combination of some clever navigation & illegal driving (i.e. up the wrong side of the road, running red traffic lights etc.) from our driver, we made the journey in good time - time enough to allow us to grab a KFC! However I must point out, this KFC is a lot better than the KFC we're used to in Britain.
With the KFC eaten & out of the way, a little hanging about, a pause & minutes silence (not too sure what for), we were ready to board the night train. Being the 5* back-packers we are, we chose to travel 2nd class, with a fan. Two upper beds & three lower - naturally upper being cheaper? The train was pretty much what we expected, and better. Having travelled on a sleeper train in India, this train was almost like travelling first class on
Virgin, London to Glasgow. It had proper fold out beds, which were made up with pillows and bed covers and we even had our curtain to draw.
The journey from Bangkok to Surat Thani would take over 11 hours, so we needed to make sure we were stocked up with some Chang and after several failed attempts to haggle the man who was pacing up & down the train with a massive ice cooler box full of the stuff, we finally reached an agreement of 40 bhats per can, which is expensive as we could get them from anyone of the million's of 7 eleven convenience stores for 25 bhats each, but it was still under a pound.
Chang in hand and travels underway, we were all in good spirit and looking forward to our journey. A few card games later, we were bored. What else is there to do on an over night train?? Party. Little did we know there was a converted cabin that had been transformed into a bar. It had seats, big speakers and not to forget a bar. Perfect. Now all we needed was some more people and some music - both of which followed,
quickly.
As the night progressed, we met a few interesting characters, 2 in particular. Fredrick & 'Crazy Horse'. Fredrick was a 23 year old, Socilite / Techno-crat from Sweden who seemed to have done pretty much everything anyone could think of. Very nice guy, who had great stories to tell & was very good at magic, namely card tricks. We enjoyed drinking with Fredrick. Crazy Horse was a totally different kettle of fish altogether. Crazy Horse was this weird Thai guy who joined us whilst we were having a nice social drink with other travellers i.e. Fredrick. Crazy Horse spoke very little English other than "You shut-up", "FCUK off" & "You wanna drink?" ("not off you, thank you"). There were 2 reasons we didn't want a drink off Crazy Horse: 1. He had this real crazy look in his eye, something that almost reminded you of a sinister bad guy out of a film who has an alter-motive or wants to eat your heart whilst it's still beating. And 2. Because of 1, we didn't want to be in debt to Crazy Horse for any reason, not even for a drink. So as you can imagine, Crazy Horse started to wear a bit thin, so what better thing to do than wait until he was really drunk & had just brought us 4 bottles of Chang (large) & then palm him off to the bar staff stat at the opposite end of bar - worked like a charm. There was a 3rd character that I forgot to mention, Sam Song. Who little did we know, would be accompanying us for most of the train journey. Let me be a little clearer. Sam Song isn't a person, it's 80% proof Thai whisky, that surprisingly doesn't have the harsh after-burn of our whisky back home, which on reflection probably isn't the best because you can drink more. Sam Song also has the opposite effect of normal whisky, it actually wakes you up more, so after a bottle of Sam Song, a few more stories, card tricks & Swedish rapping from Fredrick (who was the head man for a fairly successful Swedish Reggae / Hip Hop / Jazz Funk band) we were ready to go to sleep.
If you're 6"4 like myself, the bed is a very snug fit. It made me imagine what it feels like to lie in your own coffin. Where if you're Sam's height i.e. 5"1 then it's actually quite comfortable. Four hours later, I hadn't slept a wink, probably a combination of Sam Song, being cramped & being too hot. Sam on the other hand had a lovely nights sleep, woke up on-time, as fresh as a daisy & ready to go. The only problem was that somewhere in the night, the train had gained an hour, so we were already running an hour late so we thought we would miss our connecting bus. We didn't. It almost seemed like it had been factored into the schedule. As the train rocked up to Surat Thani train station, 4 beady-eyed individuals & 1 fresh daisy loaded their bags onto their backs & hopped off the night train.
(Another thing about the Thai's, well at least the ones that we have encountered thus far, they don't miss a buck. What I mean by this is that any opportunity to make more money from you, they will.)
With a little bit of confusion our bags were loaded onto the bus & we set off. With not much to see, I decided to get a bit of shut eye. I would probably give it about 20 minutes before we came to a stop - "we're here"... "we're not here, where are we?". Going back to my earlier point of the Thai's not missing a buck, we were at some kind of make shift depo where we were left for about 30 minutes, for no other reason other to use their toilet (5 Bhats), buy their over priced drinks & food. After they had made enough money we were scrambled back onto the bus. Probably about 10 minutes later we arrived at our destination, Surat Thani port.
Now we just had to wait for 1 more hour for another 2 passengers who were running late, & conveniently there was another over priced store where we could purchase drinks & refreshments whilst we baked in the afternoon sun. The hour took about 60 minutes, which once had passed we were ready to go! We finally boarded & made haste to Ko Pha-Ngan.
(Sorry boys & girls, not any pictures to accompany this part of the journey, so we'll sick some other pic's on shortly. By the way, all other blogs have now been updated with corresponding pictures.)
Peace & Love - Sam & Dan xx
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Kimblejit! xxx
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Hello little Beautifuls!
I wish they did Dr Fish here - It sounds fun! I love your photos and you both look so lovely and beautiful! Missing you both so much! Im just replying to your email now - its gonna be a monster of an email and will take forever to read! Miss you, love you! Tattys for now xxxxxxxxx