Getting There

The reason it's been so long since our last post is not that we don't love you, nameless faceless internet, we do - we just had to go away for a little while. Where did we go, you ask? Good question. Make yourself a hot drink, sit back, this may take a while, but we will tell you everything. And while you're making that hot drink, make me one too, will you?

Part 1

Our winter vacation officially began at 3:20 pm on December 23, 2008. That morning we had left our house at 7:30, towing all our luggage with us so that we could head off immediately after school. Here's a rundown of that day, transportation-wise.

6:00 AM - Alarm goes off, Evan continues to sleep. As a result of this, I get dressed in the dark and later find out that I managed to put two pieces of clothing on inside out. Thanks a bunch, lazy boyfriend.

6:45 AM - Massive flurry of last minute packing and cleaning. Evan even manages to make the bed before we leave. Do we have everything? Seems like it: one large backpack/suitcase, one camera bag, one laptop bag, and one purse sort of bag.

7:30 AM - We walk out to the road, and pray for a songtaew to come rescue us so we don't have to run the 3 km to school in the half an hour we have left. Fortunately, one comes soon, we hop on with all our crap, and off we go!

7:45 AM - We get off that songtaew and switch to another one that will actually take us to the school. Come on, you didn't think it would really be that easy, did you?

7:55 AM - 20 baht poorer, but on time, we arrive at school.

3:20 PM - Done with classes, we grab our stuff, head out the door and hop into Jimmy's car, which takes us about 2 km, across the street from the police academy.

3: 45 PM - We get into the van to Bangkok. 35 baht for me, 35 baht for Evan, 35 baht for the seat we had to buy for the suitcase = 105 baht total, less than $3 for the three of us for the one hour ride into the capital of Thailand. A steal.

4: 30 PM - We arrive in Bangkok, but we're still not where we need to be, so a taxi is hailed, and the three of us (don't get confused, I'm still counting the suitcase) jump in and take a 15 minute ride to Kao San road, to find a travel agent who speaks English and can finagle us a last minute bus ticket down south.

4: 45 PM - The first place we go wants to charge 1100 baht (about $33) each to Pha Ngan. Total ripoff, so we politely decline.

4:55 PM - The second travel agent we go to is a little more reasonable. She will sell us two tickets for a bus leaving in one hour, 750 baht each. This is still a ripoff, but it's the 11th hour so we suck it up and buy the tickets. Excellent! Time for dinner.

5:05 PM - We buy a battery charger for my DSLR, as the second set of batteries has been threatening to fail for weeks now, and I apparently left the charger in California. This is a major relief, and now we have everything we need for the trip.

5:15 PM - Green curry tofu for me, Tom Yum Gai for Evan (Gai means chicken), both delicious, for a total of 70 baht (~$2.10) at our favorite streetside vender on Soi Rambuttri.

5:50 PM - Evan is compulsive about being on time when we travel, so here we are at the travel agency.

6:20 PM - Someone comes and leads all the travellers who are going south to a large street two blocks away. No explanation is offered, but theoretically a bus is coming soon to pick us up.

6:30 PM - No bus yet.

7:00 PM - Still no bus.

7: 30 PM - The mosquitoes swarm around our bags and we have nowhere to sit. We've been standing by the side of the road now for over an hour, with no idea of when the bus might show up.

7:45 PM - Finally the bus arrives, and we get some idea of our itinerary. Looks like the bus will stop at 3:30 in Chumpon, where we won't get off, and then the last stop is Surat Thani at 6 am, where we transfer to a ferry that will take us the rest of the way to Pha Ngan.

3:30 AM, December 24 (Christmas Eve) - As scheduled, the bus stops in Chumpon. We blearily crack our eyes open, then think better of it, and fall back into the half sleep that is only possible when sitting up and rocking back and forth for hours.

5:30 AM - Oh good, we're early! We stumble out of the bus, check that we still have all our limbs, and hopefully all of our luggage, and take a glance around to see what might happen next.

5:35 AM - People motion us to a truck, we get in and assume more passengers will follow, but surprisingly, no one does. So Evan and I get a private taxi ride through Surat Thani, not to the pier as we expected, but apparently to another bus station where our truck driver exchanges our ferry tickets from Suratthani to Koh Phangan for bus tickets to Don Sak (about 100 km away) and ferry tickets to Phangan from there. I assume he must have made some money in this transaction, otherwise it baffles me why this was done.

6:00 AM - We are shown to a bus and motioned to get on. Our newly acquired tickets are stamped in red 'AIR CONDITIONED BUS.' Correspondingly, of course, the bus is about 80 degrees, warmer than the temperature outside, with its only ventilation apparently originating somewhere near the tail pipe, because the air is thick with diesel fumes. This bothers Evan a lot, but I have fallen into a jaded complacency and couldn't care less. I shut my eyes and try to sleep.

6:30 AM - The bus finally starts moving.

8:00 AM - We arrive at the pier at Don Sak, and board a ferry seemingly meant only for cars, as we have to walk alongside them to board it. This doesn't phase us at all. Fortunately there are seats for people on the top deck, so we grab a couple and settle down.

10:00 AM, or thereabouts - The ferry arrives at Thongsala, the main pier on Koh Pha Ngan. You might think the journey ends here. You might be wrong.

10:15 AM - We have to get across the island, to Haad Rin, of Full Moon Party fame, and the only way to do that is in a taxi. Normally, as a tourist, you arrive on a ferry full of other tourists and form groups which then bargain for taxis together. However, since there were no other tourists to speak of on our car ferry, we were not in a good bargaining position, and were in a very good position to get hosed. So we did, and spent 400 baht to go 11 km. Oy. However, this is half of what was originally proposed to us, a stunning 800 baht for those same 11 km.

10:50 AM - Haad Rin. Now we had to get a long tail boat to take us to our destination, a cove just around the corner from Haad Rin, but not accessible by land.

1:00 PM - Unfortunately all the boatmen had been told it was Christmas Eve, and had doubled their prices. They knew they had doubled their prices, we knew they had doubled their prices, but they had the boats, and we had too much luggage to swim, so after almost 2 hours of holding out on our parts to try to get them to see reason, we bit the bullet and paid them 400 baht for a 7 minute boat ride to the wrong cove because apparently the waves were too big to land in our cove.

1:10 PM - We land in the cove next to the one we want to be in, and gather all our stuff, then we have to hike to our cove over the mountain in between the coves. It's pretty steep, there are a lot of stairs carved into the stone face of the cliffs. Imagine one of the steepest hikes you've been on, and then imagine doing that with the luggage from your last two week vacation.

1:30 PM - We finally arrive at our cove, and are greeted by Hannah. Yay! We are also filthy, very sweaty, and mentally and physically exhausted.

End of Part 1, tune in for Part 2 tomorrow!