Phuket to Bangkok

Well folks, Phuket was over much too fast. We had six nights there and spent most of the time lazing about our hotel… in hindsight I think we should have started somewhere more low key and ended in party town Patong Beach. Not all was lost though, three of the boys got half sleeve tattoos (pics will be added when I have a faster connection) and the weather was agreeable. We hired beach chairs on our last day for a few hours and soaked in some serious Thai sun rays. Plus I learned how to drive the moped we'd rented for the week and even how to drive it with Andy on the back!!
On our last day we went to a travel agency to book a bus from Phuket to Surat Thani where we would catch a night train to Bangkok. The travel agents told us we could get a minibus (think large van) to take us to Surat Thani that wouldn’t leave until noon (instead of 7:15am) and would cost the same price. We had to round up the troops to get the money sorted out and when we came back about 5 minutes later the time had changed from noon to 12:30 and the arrival time from 4 to 6pm! Whatever, we’ll just book it.
So the next morning we checked out and waited for the minibus to pick us up at our hotel. Little did we know that this drive would not be just from point A to point B. First, the minibus was about 20 minutes late. Then we watched as the driver stuffed all our luggage into the first row of seats because the truck space was pretty much nonexistent. When we finally got going we quickly realized we weren’t headed in the right direction… that was because we had three more passengers to fit in our already full to the brim minibus. First we picked up a guy in a cowboy hat in Karon Beach. The driver played around with the bags again. Next we picked up two more girls in Kata Beach. A few people thought it was unbelievable that everyone and their bags was going to fit, but somehow we and it all did.
So we finally got going in the right direction. This lasted about 10 minutes because as we drove over a manhole, or some sort of grate in the road, a loud POP occurred and the hub cap went rolling off into traffic. Our driver stopped and retrieved the hub cap and then pulled into the next gas station. We’d obviously blown a tire, probably because the bus was beyond capacity. We all got out the van disappeared. I think we hung around the Esso for about 30 minutes before the bus came back and we all piled back on.
The rest of the ride was smooth sailing minus the driver stopping to go to a bank and Andy drinking too many Changs and begging Dan to ask the driver to stop so he could pee (he almost did this twice, haha). We finally arrived at the Surat Thani railway station at around 6pm and amazingly there were 2nd class air conditioned sleeping berths available on the train that came in less than 20 minutes. We scrambled to buy tickets, beer, and some food before the train arrived and before I had time to find a toilet the train arrived.
We found our seats and ate our train station chicken curry (not bad, very hot!). Then we broke into the Changs and played a 20THB game of poker. It was certainly a nice way to travel. Train staff came around at about 9pm and changed our seats into beds and we all called it a night before 11pm.
We were awoken the next morning at around 4:45am by a thai woman’s high pitched call of “Coffee? Tea?” but in thai. By 5:30am we were all kicked out of our bunks so the staff could turn them back into seats and have the sheets ready for the cleaners in Bangkok.
We arrived in Bangkok on time pretty much, just after 6am. We unloaded and got taxis to the notorious Khoa Sarn Road. We hung out in Subway until about 715, and then went in search of a hotel with 4 rooms available. We found one on the third try and went straight back to sleep for a few hours.
At around 9:45 we were back on the streets and were immediately approached, accosted? by tuk-tuk drivers with an offer to show us the sights in the city for only 10 THB each. Since this was what we were looking for we took up their offer and hopped in three tuk-tuks. The tuk-tuks took us to a big golden Buddha and a temple that was closed, the Tourist Authority of Thailand (where we got our Muay Thai Boxing tickets!) and also three suit shops. Somehow the tuk-tuk drivers get free fuel by bringing people to these tailors. At the first two we just walked in said we didn’t want anything and walked out, but at the last one they got Andy. He ended up buying a cashmere peacoat for 3000THB. He got it at that price because he was the first customer of the day and it was lucky for the shop to get the first customer and it didn’t matter if there was no profit on their first sale… or something like that. He goes back for his fitting tomorrow morning and will be able to pick it up before we go to Laos next week.
We had some lunch on Khoa San Road, took a short nap, and then hit the streets for some shopping.