Post for Thursday May 4/ Friday May 5 2006
During the day Thursday we set up our bus trip and after some running around secured a trip on the 8pm bus to Surat Thani. We hurriedly got ready for the bus and took a cab out to the station just in time to get onto our bus. Our cab driver was a very creative driver and if that had not been the case we may not have caught the bus at all, he seemed to create lanes out of thin air and squeeze into spaces that you couldn't have convinced me a car would be able to fit. He was a brilliant driver.
The bus ride to Surat Thani was very long and less comfortable than anticipated. The ride to Surat Thani from Bangkok was scheduled to be an eleven hour ride but in the end we arrived two hours earlier than expected which caused us to be groggy and confused on hour arrival. When we stumbled off the bus half asleep at five in the morning none of us were thinking clearly and unfortunately we agreed to a ride in a sawng-thaew to an office to get our tickets for the next bus trip to Krabi. The reason that this was unfortunate is that when you leave any transportation hub you are bombarded with many people shouting "where you go?" and if you accept someone's offer of a ride right away they'll most likely bring you to their friend's business and over charge you for the ride there. Once you're there you’ll get over charged by there friend. Can you guess what happened to us? The sawng-thaew brought us to some dingy ticket office and then gouged us for the price of the sawng-thaew and once we were at this ticket office there was really no where else to go and they did have some transportation going to Krabi and so we took our chances. Sadly, our chances over charged us by triple the price and we ended up on a dirty city bus for three hours to Krabi. We also had to wait around for this dingy bus to arrive in a dirty room watching poorly dubbed English television and watching the giant moth (which was beautiful) fly in and out of the dirty washroom. We decided when we got off at Krabi that we wouldn't talk to anyone after we got off of the bus until we were all mentally and physically collected prepared to make a decision. We found someone to get us to the pier so that we could take a ferry out to the Ko Phi Phi islands and we also booked a hotel for the night on Phi Phi Don because it was the Friday night of the long weekend and things may be booked since we'dbe arriving later.
You may be doing the time calculations in your head to wonder what time it is in this tale... or you may not, but I will give the break down anyway. We left 8pm Thursday and arrived in Surat Thani Friday morning at 5am, we left Surat Thani at 6:50am for Krabi and arrived at 10am and now we had to wait for the 3pm ferry which wouldn't bring us into Phi Phi Don until 5pm. Since we had time to kill until we grabbed the ferry we ate some lunch and consumed a lot of ice cream, it was quite hot out and we were tired from our bus rides. The wait felt like forever. Finally, we were able to board the ferry. Tabitha and I wanted to stand on the deck for the ride there so we all went to the front of the boat and assumed our positions for the ride (Spud did join us on the deck). I was standing at the railing and got drenched with waves. It was glorious! The water was so warm as was the wind so I didn't feel cold at all and some of the waves were really huge and I was surprised at how wet I got. The only sad thing was that I was wearing my jeans and afterwards they stunk like sea water. Upon arrival at the pier we spied someone holding the sign for our guest house so we threw our baggage onto a cart and he led us through the streets of the village to our home for the night. We stayed in the 'Harmony House' guest house but I wouldn't say it was terribly harmonious. We felt very cramped and the place smelled a little. I have stayed in worse accommodations before but this was our little get away and we were sure we could find better within the same price range. We got ready and cleaned up to go out and decided to go out for some dinner and after dinner to look for a new guest house. We decided to go to a restaurant called 'The Rock' which was up in the trees a bit. The guy working there was a little strange but the food was amazing so we'll let that go. I had a coconut and spicy red curry dish with shrimp and rice. I can't even describe how good it was, melt in your mouth really, and just the right amount of spicy and sweet. So tasty.
We took a little stroll around the village which was full of jewellery stalls and was buzzing with a festival atmosphere... it was a Friday night though so maybe it was just a Friday night atmosphere. We looked for around for a bit and found a new guest house. Originally we saw these really cute little guest huts called 'Ciao Bella' but they were full, boo, but we did find a good place in the end. The place we found to stay was called 'H.C Anderson' which was much nicer than the place we already had without much extra cost. After walking around a bit more Tabitha and I went back to the 'Harmony House' and ate some junk food, studied some Thai, and went to sleep early. Spud (Brian) went out to find some friends we met on the ferry, he wasn't successful in finding them but he did find some other Irish folks and watch a Thai boxing fight with them.
Today's picture is taken looking out from Long beach on Phi Phi Don, the boats are the ones you can hire to take you around.
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