fri day 77

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This morning I came to a decision to travel south to Ko Lipe - id heard there are many sea gypsy people that live on the island and fancied the chance of going to see them. This meant getting a minibus to Trang and getting a boat from there to the island. A girl id been chatting to in the hostel last night felt at a bit of a loose end so decided to come along as well. Having to get on 2 separate minibuses we made the 2hr journey to Trang. Elizabeth ( French Canadian) was late leaving Krabi so I waited at the bus station for over an hour for her to arrive. We were then told that there are no boats to Ko Lipe from Trang! And that we would have to get a further minibus further south to Satun ( which is so far south its almost in Malaysia!) feeling somewhat disgruntled and after a 4hr bus ride we were in Satun. Feeling pretty tired and hungry we found a hotel and feeling deserted in a strange place - that rarely sees a tourist and in a very deserted bus station after asking 3-4 people finally someone knew where we wanted to go! The hotel was approx 3km away and showing them the address in Thai didn't seem to make much difference. Being offered a nice room at a good price we jumped at it and then headed out to the only restaurant in town - it seemed - for some dinner. Speaking with the owner of the hotel he offered us a lift with his friend to the pier tomorrow so we could catch the boat to Ko Lipe - at a price. We decided to think on it for the evening and let him know in the morning - but that we would probably do it for ease of getting there. We headed back to the hotel after dinner and after a game of pool settled down for the night after an unexpectedly tiring day.

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