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Published: October 27th 2010
Never Go Against Your Gut Feeling!!
Being lazy, we left organising our journey from Koh Samui to Phuket to the last minute.. in the end we decided to do what I hate doing and buy tickets through a travel agent (this always ends in tears for me!). We were due to be picked up around 6.30am the following morning.. and according to my schedule it would go something like this... 8am departure from ferry port... bus straight to middle of Surat Thani and make 11am departure on 1st class government bus from Surat Thani.. arrival in Phuket at about 3pm at the latest...
HOWEVER as usual, like any good Thailand tour company it went something like this...7am pickup from hotel.. get to the ferry port and rush to grab some breakfast... Narelle not feeling well stayed with the bags while Jakki grabbed us some baguettes from a local restaurant and I went in search of some thai coffeee... I found a great little local shop where they didnt speak a lick of english and even though I was pointing at some iced coffees that others had just bought, I still dont think they understood what I wanted...
I really need to learn more Thai.. eventually a thai man that spoke a little english was able to communicate and translate... We then made the 8am departure from the ferry port.. onto the tour company bus at the other end by 10am... The bus then travelled 2 kilometres before stopping on the side of road for 10 minutes... Why we still have no idea!! Then instead of taking us straight to Surat Thani it felt the need to travel to OLD ferry port.. Here we were ordered to get off bus and I mean ordered.. I felt like we were prisoners heading to an execution..... Here we could go to the toilet (if we paid for it) and were made to wait around 20 minutes... They piled us into tuktuks to head to Surat Thani... we ended up where we need to be sometime after 12.. to be honest I had lost track of time.. We were all so over it.. hungry and busting to go to the toilet... Luckily where they dropped us off was close to the govt bus station and so we walked there (ignoring their attempts to sell us private bus tickets) only to find
out we had missed the last 1st class bus and that we would have to get the 2nd class bus... which was due to leave in 2 minutes...
While Jakki jumped on the bus, I tried to find us some food but there was nothing snacky I could just grab and Narelle raced to the toilet... Narelle had an interesting time, with large backpack on her back and balancing her other bags while squatting over a thai toilet.. She managed to make it to the bus in one piece just before it pulled away! I was livid by this stage that we had been stuffed around all morning and now were on a 4 hour bus journey with no food and no toilet!
This bus then proceeded to stop at EVERY stop it possibly could in Surat Thani before heading out to the Railway station, sitting there for 10 minutes. It was at this point that people came on the bus selling fried chicken and sticky rice.. I wasnt sure how 'clean' it was but I was too hungry to care.. the other girls didnt risk it... The man gave me two pieces of chicken but I tried
to tell him I wanted other pieces NOT those two... so ended up with all four! I munched on some of it but it didnt taste that great and I was a little worried about food poisoning so left most of it....
Once the bus left the railway station it then proceeded to pick up people and stop at every stop it could.. the bus was packed and the trip was a nightmare... I then had the displeasure of watching a German lady make an ass of herself... She was travelling with her husband and three young kids... and decided that because they had paid for seats they were having the seats... despite old men standing in the aisle next to them.. they were asked to put the small children on their laps so that others could sit down and she went off... carrying on how she had PAID for 5 seats and was having 5 seats... I'm not sure she quite understood the concept of a local bus but each to her own... I am fuming watching her speak to the Thai's like crap. Rude cow.
We were all busting for the toilet and I was desperately
trying to ignore my bursting bladder knowing how far we had to go... The bus finally stopped at Takua Pa for a toilet break (this is about an hour or two from Phuket and we should have been in Phuket already) where we all bolted from the bus to be first in line.. Jakki was almost in a sprint! We grabbed some snacky food which left alot to be desired and got back on our bus from hell.... Again the bus stopped at every possible stop it could and when it hit Phuket I felt relief knowing how close we were to the finish line.. only to get more and more mad as it stopped even more.. it was literally stopping every 100-200 meters! I wanted to scream....
We rocked into Phuket Bus Station at almost 7pm!!!!! From there we negotiated a taxi and arrived at our hotel tired and grumpy half hour later! Phew what an epic journey! NEVER again will I buy tickets from a travel agent!!!!
Phuket Losing its Charm
After freshening up in our gorgeous hotel, the Patong Mercure, we headed out for drinks. We started off at David's bar, Little
Aussie Town... When we first arrived, I walked up to David and gave him a big hug.. he looked a little confused as to who I was, and I thought he had forgotten me... A minute later I realised I had been hugging his brother (a new addition to the bar these days) who looks exactly like him! Hehehe! I am sure he thought all his Xmas's had come at once! He quickly phoned David who turned up 5 minutes later all big smiles and hugs. There was a new girl behind the bar, Pear, who was a lot of fun... We ordered some food from a local restaurant (and got to pay 'Thai' prices) and proceeded to get pretty smashed. We left David's bar and headed to Bangla Rd where we visited a few of the girly bars, then onto Rock City.. I didnt last long at Rock City and ended up heading home alone while the girls stayed out for a bit longer...
One night we managed to catch up with Cathy and Gary (friends from Adelaide I met on Trip Advisor) who were still in Phuket (into their 3rd month of about 6) at Nicky's
Handlebar. Cathy and Gary are good friends with Nicky the owner, and his staff and I have to say, I can see why they have made this little bar their 'local' while in Phuket... its a GREAT little bar with friendly staff, cheap drinks and awesome food... Nicky gave us a tour of his new hotel that is directly behind the bar, all Harley Davidson themed and GORGEOUS(check it out if you are going to Phuket...
Nicky's Hotel . By midnight we were talking of kicking on in Bangla Rd and told Cathy and Gary we would meet them there... but on the long walk there, full of alcohol and wobbly on our feet we called it a night... The following day was spent recovering by the pool. That night I headed off to explore one of the local shopping centres "Jungceylon" which in all my trips i have walked past but never entered... I was going to check out a movie but there were none on in English that were on at the time, so I decided to head to MK for a feed..
MK is the place I went with Tong in Surat Thani last April and loved.. it
is a chain restaurant and serves amazing duck and those hotpots where you add all the ingrediants to a stock on your table.. I wasnt sure what to order but after the duck arrived at my table (a medium serve) along with my green noodles I was quick to cancel my stock pot.... I had already WAY overordered! Kind of embarrassing when you are eating alone! Full as a goog I caught a motorbike taxi back to the hotel with my Svensen's Macadamia Nut icecream (yes full but still able to fit in icecream!!!) before calling it a night. The girls had decided to head to a Muay Thai boxing match that night which I definitely wasnt keen to see so I headed to bed!
By the time we got to Phuket, I was starting to run out of money and we were all a little bit exhausted from the busy schedule. Jakki had managed to obtain a great sunburn on Samui so she was red and sore. The next few days we did our own thing a bit... My days were filled with eating brekkie at Oasis with their free internet... a few hours in the sun tanning
and drinks at night... We started thinking that for the last week, after Phuket, we would all head off and do some solo travel... living in each others pockets for 4 weeks had taken the toll on all of us and we all felt like we needed some 'me' time... Narelle had plans to head back to Bangkok while I was still keen to head to Chiang Mai as planned (Chiang Mai is great for budget travel as it is sooo cheap) and Jakki, being a complete beach bum was keen to stay in the islands and explore them further....
We all had some decisions to make, but I was keen to leave Phuket... I have to admit that despite loving the people there and having my regular places to hang/shop, I have found that Phuket is just getting too expensive, too 'whatever'... the shop vendors are rude and rarely want to barter within reason... I found myself not enjoying it as much as I should... During these last few days, Jakki and I both made the decision to come home early.... we had originally booked flights to come home a week early so we had these pre-booked
flights ready to go... and just had to change our main flight from KL to Melb back...
My 2nd last night in Phuket, I went back to David's bar for a quick drink and met up with some guys from Perth... we all ended up pretty smashed and headed to a girly bar up some dodgy alley... It was a fun night and the boys invited me to head to Phi Phi Island with them a couple of days later.. I was soooo tempted to stay that extra week and travel with them.. but the next morning with a hangover, zero money and a craving for my own bed I stuck to my guns and ended the trip early... Later, that same night I managed to catch up with some friends from NSW who arrived that night... the night was soooo big and we rocked on at Rock City and when that shut down we kicked on next door at a place I think was called Taipan... We stumbled home in daylight with a random bar girl following us... I never ended up with any photos of that night as I had not planned on going out and didnt
have the camera on me! Probably a good thing I think! I was pretty messy!
The Long Road Home
The following day I struggled to get out of bed, I was sooo hungover.... eventually I made it out of bed and rushed to the OTop markets for some very last minute shopping with my last few baht... exhausted from my hangover still and all the last minute shopping I got a massage before heading back to the hotel and tumbling into bed, not looking forward to the next morning and a long couple of days of travel.. The following morning, Jakki and I headed to the airport early for our flight to KL and Narelle headed off a few hours later to Bangkok... Arriving in KL we had a full day to kill but were both too exhausted to head into the city and explore. We got a room at Tune Hotel at the Airport for a few hours, had a nap, shower and feed then eventually headed back to the airport where we ate McDonalds and lazed on the floor until our flight (ah the life of a cheap ass backpacker!)
The flight home
was uneventful and the plane half empty so we were able to stretch out on 3 seats at the back of the plane and sleep most of the way home... Once in Melbourne we tried to swap our flight that was later that night for an earlier flight but Virgin wanted $400 to do so! Ridiculous.... we ended up spending the day lazing around the floor of the airport (again) and then Dan Murphy's with a couple of guys from NSW who were doing the same thing... they were both teaching students who had just come back from teaching in Cambodia so we all swapped stories over beers... Finally at about 10pm that night, exhausted we hit Adelaide... it was nice to finally get home... I think by this stage I had a massive $20 left to my name!! Haha!
Anyway sorry for the huge delay in my blogs... I kind of lost the steam there for awhile and also my mojo! BUT I am back and busy planning a trip to Thailand and Bali for February 2011... so stay tuned for the next adventure!
Reet xxx
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Lynn Tate
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Worth the wait
Hi Reet..was shocked to see a blog after all this time..but worth the wait as ur such a good story writer. lol. Sorry u didn't get to C/Mai again, i love it there & can't wait til March. My 5 year plan is to live there. Look forward to reading about Bali..spewin i'm going to miss it. Cheers