The long journey to Phuket

Friday, October 24th

At 6:30am, I woke up to finish up my blog from last night. At 7:15am, steph and I started to get ready for our long journey to phuket. At 7:45am, we realized our ticket said pick up was 6:30-7am. It was 7:45am already, sh*t! We sat outside the guesthouse waiting for the reception desk to open. What a mess...we swore the receptionist told us pick up was at 8am. I guess we should of checked the tickets last night. Oh wells, crap happens. With long trips, things like this are bound to happen, so we don't even care that much. After waiting for 1hr and 45mins, the receptionist came and we sorted a new plan to get to phuket...leaving at 11:30am.

It's surprising to see nothing was open still at 9:45am. Not even restaurants. It would suck if you were an early bird looking for breakfast first thing in the morning. I guess this is a beachtown and everyone sleeps in.

At the guesthouse we got sandwiches, surfed the net, and read our books. Pretty easy going. At 11:45am, our taxi driver to the ferry came. Our long journey to phuket began there.

The ride was a quick 45mns and it started pouring cats and dogs during the drive. Luckily it tapered off to a drizzle by the time we reached the ferry terminal to get our ferry tickets to surat thani. Steph was pretty excited to use the rain jacket she bought in hong kong. Sadly it wasn't waterproof. We hung around the ferry terminal for an hour or so before getting on the fast ferry, which took another 1.5hrs. Some people on the ferry were so rude. This wasn't a huge ferry, but a small one with seats packed tightly together. Some backpackers thought it was their right to take up not two but three seats...and when they saw people piling in they decided to not move. If I assumed correctly, they probably only bought one seat. Shove out of the way! After the ferry we stopped in surat thani to renew our ticket for the minibus to phuket. We grabbed some pad thai for an early dinner at 5pm.

We then got escorted to the open taxi (looks like a hay truck) that was jam packed with people to go to the minibus station. Steph and I looked at each other in disbelief. No way we could fit in there. No worries, the early bird didn't get the worm this time. We got to sit in the front seat. Poor people in the back. Ha!

Another hour passed us in the p.p. service & transfer minibus station, and we purposely fell for another scam. The minibus operator wanted to know if we wanted to be dropped off at our hostel. Sure, of course that's fine. He wanted 200 baht per person. Good thing I checked with our hostel that it should be 100 baht for a car (two of us). After some more conversation, the operator played the card that we would have trouble finding a taxi at 10pm and he would just charge us 100 baht ($3) each. Fine fine fine. We will pay double because we are sick of bargaining. Also, we suspect that we had to wait an hour before the minibus took off because they wanted people to spend money at the canteen. All for the money. Scammers. Sketchy!

Once again, steph and I lucked out and got to sit in the front of the van. Good thing we are small. Steph more than me. The ride was 4.5 hours and it rained the whole time. We watched family guy and house on my ipod. Then, our driver tried to scam us again by dropping us off in a reststop where he gets kickbacks (which is pretty normal by now) and a travel agent. The travel agent tried to scam the Israeli passengers on our minibus to book hotels with them. Although it was a scam, it's already really late, it's raining, and they don't have reservations anywhere. Determined not to be scammed, they refused their help and demanded to be dropped off in phuket town. They didn't want to even pay extra for the taxi to drive them to the beach they want to go. Steph and I were more than happy to pay the double taxi price of 100 baht each to not deal with the hassle.

Steph and I are pretty impressed with this bus/ferry system. There are many parties involved, which must require careful coordination. We only paid our guesthouse the price of the full ticket - 800 baht ($24) We wonder how the profits get trickled down. Our guess is the purpose of the renewed tickets are vouchers for the involved parties to claim their money from the main company. Who knows.

So yes, another long travel day. We were traveling since 11:45am, so 10hr and 45mins later we got to our hostel - Phuket backpackers. We got there hungry and tired. To make matters worse, the hostel claimed we never booked our rooms despite the numerous emails I'd sent throughout the previous two days. I was furious. Never mess with priscilla when she is hungry and tired. I whipped out my blackberry and showed her the emails. I said literally, I'm hungry and tired. We need to get a room for our agreed 450 baht ($14) per night. The receptionist had to call her boss to confirm our room while I'm carrying a soaking wet backpack that weighed 16kgs (35lbs). I was not a happy camper, but eventually things got sorted out. We got placed in a private dorm room (2 bunk beds) with shared bathrooms. The place was remarkably clean and it reminded us of the yotel at heathrow airport. I'm glad everything got sorted out.

Ahhh...the hunger issue. We went to some corner canteen place and got ourselves some egg noodles. Nice and basic for 60 baht each ($2). Afterwards, we showered and chilled a bit before bed.