Advertisement
Published: January 11th 2010
Edit Blog Post
We were at jetty at 5:00am. I had broken sleep all night and the only real position I called comfortably remain in was straight on my back with my arm draping down beside the life Jackets I was lying on. Everything was hurting and stiff and my neck muscles where that sore that I had to take Nurofen for the headache. A little Thai man held a sign up for everyone one our bus and within minutes we were taking off at break neck speed down the highway for our visa run to the Malaysian border. It was almost impossible to sleep in the van and we felt every bump sitting in the back. On the way we stopped at several places and on one place we pulled out from the parking lot and the guy next to me went “Oh” and then quickly turned around. I looked out the back to see what he was looking at? We had just ran over a dog and the dogs head was curled back in pain and not even yelping, the other dog came over to help but as we drove away the dog gently put its head back down and stopped moving.
The bus drive didn’t even care and Jacinta tried to pretend that nothing happened because she couldn’t deal with it. I felt really sad, but glad that it was over really quick.
When we got to the visa terminal 4 hours later we got a stamp for departing Thailand we walked across the border for an arrival stamp, walked 3m around the back of the building for our Malaysian departure stamp and then walked back over the border to get our arrival stamp back in Thailand again. So now we were able to stay in the country for another 15days before we had to leave the country again.
Back in the van to travel at break neck speed again back where we just came from. We all agreed to pay more and catch the faster boat back to Koh Phangan. We only just made it on the pier and hopped out to buy tickets straight away. The van driver drove past the ticket office 100m away and charged everyone 250THB/ ticket, 30THB/ticket more than the office. There wasn’t too much we could do because the boat was just about to leave. Everywhere you go in Thailand there are people skimming
off the top of travellers and tourist. The amount of backhanding and corruption is ripe and you get sick of being taken advantage of, but there’s nothing you can do about it because this is the way they operate, you just try and save money were you can to make up for this.
Back at Koh Phangan jetty where we started our trip 20 hours earlier, we were tired, cranky and sore from sitting all day and we were glad to find a guest house that had a hot shower as its been cold showers for the past 3 weeks. I needed a good shave ready for the dive course tomorrow. Some more street food for dinner and an early night in bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.043s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 13; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0179s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mike
non-member comment
You went to Satun for the border crossing - yes?
You didn't mention where you were at the border crossing - but the title says Satun. Is that right? I'll try it on motorbike from krabi in a few months. Cheers...