Day 66: Northwards to Bangkok

A very long day of travelling today. After another 7-11 breakfast of yoghurt and packaged croissants, we were picked up in a ute just before 9 and down at the pier by 9am. As usual it was absolute bedlam, with very little in the way of organisation like usual. For these ferries you need to check in and get your ticket, and by the time we found the window the queue for tickets was around the building, out the door and nearly 100m down the street!!

The boat wasn't scheduled to leave until 10:15 and the ferries hadn't been especially punctual, so I wasn't super concerned as the line was moving albeit slowly. Though the Spanish guy queuing behind us was booked on a 9:30 boat to Koh Samui and was far less relaxed! As we got closer to the building Shandos realised that an attendant was sorting people into the Bangkok/Chumphon counter and the Koh Samui/Koh Phang-An counter, so she went through and grabbed our tickets. All up about a 45 minute wait.

But of course the ferry wasn't there, and neither was the 9:30 ferry either! So we waited and waited. At least we weren't sweating on a connection at the other end, though we were definitely sweating! Eventually not long after 10am the 9:30 boat departed (our Spanish friend made it on), then our boat arrived at about 10:15. Not exactly on schedule, since it takes them about 15 minutes to unload the boat and another 15 to load it back up. Finally underway by 10:40.

The trip itself was uneventful - Koh Tao is fairly isolated so there were no islands or anything to look at, just lots of water. We sat inside again on the lower deck, and the boat was very full with probably no seats left.

Arrived in Chumphon after about 2 hours, where we picked up our connecting tickets for the coach to Bangkok. It's all run by the same company so it was essentially the same ticket. We waited about 30 minutes for the coach to arrive and had some lunch from the nearby food hall (I had a chicken with basil leaf which was extra spicy, not the best thing to eat before an 8 hour bus trip!) before the bus departed about 1:20pm.

The bus was "supposed" to get to Bangkok around 8:30pm but the company hadn't been the slightest bit on schedule for any of our ferry trips, and I wasn't expecting anything now. I was also a little nervous because bus crashes aren't an uncommon occurrence in Thailand, but we settled in and off we went.

The trip was very long, and didn't arrive in Bangkok until about 9:45pm. I spent the time listening to music, reading, listening to podcasts and having a brief doze - in spite of last night's insomnia I didn't really feel like sleeping.

Scenery was pretty uneventful, though the first half of the trip felt very slow as the dual carriageway was still under construction, meaning lots of diversions back and forth across the median strip. Grabbed a metered taxi and arrived at the hotel with no problems, though we sat in a massive traffic jam near our hotel for about 15 minutes - yes, there's huge traffic jams even at 10pm on a Saturday night!

Hotel itself is fantastic - very modern, very clean, and very convenient. Only opened this year, all brand new fittings in what looks to be a brand new building, and lots of little artistic touches. Bangkok looks interesting and exciting, and we're looking forward to exploring more.Read more