Bedless for two nights

After I finished up my diving trip, I headed to the dreaded Patong in Phuket with my dive buddies and a guy from Quebec. The English guy who dived with us owns a dive shop on Ko Phi Phi, where I was prior to my four-day diving trip, and he was looking for a night out on the town. Despite not really liking town all that much, I was dropped off there with the others, and I shared a room with another one of the divers.

Despite being the horrible reminder of all things bad when it comes to sex tourism, I discovered my first time around in Patong that it's a good place to have a few drinks. After having dinner as a group, 2 people peeled off immediately due to one not feeling very good. We walked up and down the main drag, then ironically enough, when it came to have another drink, we all were completely exhausted. So we went back to the hotel at about 10pm, completely sober. Oh well, so much for a night out on the town. Diving can really wipe you out. (By the way, Uncle Jim, YES I will probably always compare my future dives to my Similan dives...)

However, not drinking probably helped me out with my travel plans. I went to bed not knowing exactly where I was going to go, nor with whom or when.

I woke up the next day with a clear head and decided to get out of Patong as fast as possible. I booked a bus to Bangkok that left at 1pm after finding out that I'd have to travel 3-4 hours to a bus station and could not buy my ticket in advance... I could have had to sleep in ugly Surat Thani, and I didn't want that.

What I did get was a bit of a goose chase. I arrived to the travel agency at 1 on the dot, just after it had started to pour down rain, and I was the first to be picked up. The driver was upset that I hadn't gotten there sooner, but the girl had told me 1pm, and walked up the steps as my watch (which is 2 minutes fast) said 12:59:50.

It took about an hour picking up everyone around the island of Phuket (I don't really understand why I was first, since I was located about the farthest north possible, and that's the direction we needed to go eventually... but I digress. We stopped once about 2 hours in so the driver could buy some pineapples, then again after another hour for a "15 minute" break, which turned into 25 minutes. We finally arrived to Surat Thani in one piece and we were deposited at another travel agency and assured that the bus left from there, but at 7pm (it was 6pm).

So I decided to check out the town for about half an hour. I wandered about two blocks to see nothing more than urban-ness, and so I settled down at an internet cafe. Thankfully another woman from my van saw me enter there because at about 6:35pm, she ran in, tapped me on the shoulder, and told me that we had to go NOW!

I ran out of there after paying and followed the girl down the two blocks to the travel agency. We were piled into a tuk tuk and then dropped eventually at yet another travel agency, this one with a restaurant. Oh, I guess the bus didn't leave until 8pm. How screwy can you get?

Well, the bus probably pulled away at about 8:15pm, and I chatted briefly with the Aussie girl next to me until the haze created by my sleeping pill enveloped me. I dozed pretty smoothly until about 5:30am, just about 30 minutes before we pulled into Bangkok.

Upon arrival, I decided to get the hell outta Dodge and went to the train station to buy a ticket for that nights train heading north. They had a spot in a sleeper train available, so I bought it and dropped off my big bag.

That day was spent picking up my camera, which was getting repaired (long story, don't ask), poking around the 8-floor mega mall named MBK, checking out the Royal Palace and the Emerald Buddha, also part of the same complex. That evening (last night), I boarded the night train and I arrived to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, at about noon today. I'm pretty exhausted and quite ready for a good night's sleep (non pill-induced). Thankfully, my train travel was much less eventful than the previous day's travel to Bangkok.