Phuket

Thailand

November 2006
2 days

After a hell of a journey - usual crap with being told one thing and then an entirely longer more painful thing happens without any explanation - we arrive in Phuket.

Oh i checked my email just before we left bangkok and found out my cat Hazel died, we've had her for 14 years and although not unexpected i am still very sad, (i'm sure some of you remember her fondly with memories of her trying to savage you - she was an awesome cat).

Ignore this bit if you dont want to read me moaning...
I will explain that journey. We get a bus from bangkok to Surat Thani about 500km south - 12hrs. Anyway that goes fine and we arrive in Surat Thani at 5am and are told our bus to phuket is at 6:30am, so we wait in the middle of nowhere and a bus arrives at 6:30am and we think hurrah so far so good - anyway this bus drives round the corner and drops us off at a travel agents and we think we're going to just wait a few minutes till another bus takes us to phuket. After waiting for ages i ask when are we leaving, they now tell us 8:30am - great, thanks for the update! When the bus finally leaves we are cramped in a minivan for about 6hrs and then when we are near our destination the driver asks us all where we are going in phuket and everyone is going to Patong beach, so the driver.....stops the bus about 20km from patong beach at another travel agents and says thats where the bus is stopping. The travel agents try and sell us accomodation, we all (there are about 10 of us) tell them we will sort ourselves out. They then try and charge us 50 baht each for the same minivan to take us the remaining 20kms! We tell them where to go and walk off. Well we are in the middle of nowhere and there are no taxis so we finally find another minivan driver and offer him 50baht each to take us to patong beach - after much haggeling and negotiation we finally get on the way (the theory was that at least we dont pay THAT travel agents the money). Well this driver was all keen to get our business and seemed friendly. I was sitting in the front and as we were arriving in patong he asked where we wanted dropping off, i said just in the center near the budget accomodation would be fine - he screamed at me &Quot;WHERE???!!!!!!&Quot; as my answer didnt seem good enough or something? well i told him (everyone on the bus said i was very polite) &Quot;to NOT shout at me.&Quot; And then, this piece of human garbage threatened to hit me with his elbow - everyone was outraged on the bus, i was totally shocked. We forced the driver to apologise before getting his money - oh yeah and he had the cheek to ask where i was from and commented that &Quot;all english are hooligans!&Quot; errr...he was the one that wanted a fight - i called him ignorant and childish.

Anyway we get to patong beach and find a hostel, this is now high season and although the weather is better and the beach is white and sea is clear its too busy. We spend a day on a motor scooter trying ot find an alternative beach but with no luck, nothing really appeals to us (all quite resorty and expensive) so we decide to go to Koh Lanta - a new island we have not been to yet.

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