One long, long journey.

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Finally, reaching Koh Phangan (spelling?), I feel like the holiday (ie being lazy) has started. Full moon party (beach party every 28 or so days where everyone turns into werewolves and eat the shit out of each other) meant we had to get here as early as possible. So after reaching friendly, albeit smoggy and smelly Bangkok, we left that evening to get the night train down the peninsula to a quaint little village.

Now, I doubt any of you have ever tried to get to sleep with someone hammering you.

For the small minority who have, you have some idea of sleeping on this train. Although we were given 'clean' sheets, the combination of fully clothed and being at the top of the horribly hot carriage meant within 30 seconds of lying down the bed was so wet it may as well have been outside (when it's raining quite hard). Not to mention repeated disturbances by needy trips to the toilet (unrelated to the wet bed, im 65% sure), inevitable vibration, and lack of lack of lighting at 2 in the morning. As a result, the first horizontal sleep I had after 7 hours time shift and 18 hours in sitting position was not so much a sleep as a strange game where someone punches a random part of my body every time I close my eyes.

Once we arrived in Surat Thani at 6, it was a hilarious bus and 5 hour boat ride to this island. The boat is worth mentioning because the skipper seemed completely oblivious to two concepts: overloading and weight distribution, two concepts I would have thought important for a sailor to be aware of. There were probably around 50 people hanging around on the upper deck with nowhere at all to sit - considering there were probably 200 seats in total... Of course this would suggest the captain's complete disregard of the sign at the start saying "everyone must put on a lifejacket now - it is the Skipper's responsibility to make sure everyone is safe" or something along those lines. As for the weight distribution - I would consider it too demanding to ask him to check the density of each passenger, but the boat was quite noticeably falling to the left at all points during the crossing - and all the more disconcerting when we went over a massive freak wave. I'll be forced to excuse him though, as it's quite possible he had one leg shorter than the other, thus negating and making him unaware of said perma-tilt.

So. Now we've reached an amazingly cool hotel place in Haadrin (spelling?), and am incredibly looking forward to a nice nap and lazing about for an afternoon, trying not to get burnt. Might stick up some photos in the next few days. Adioso.

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