Ferry Shmary

Here I am, day 2 on Ko Tao. Getting here was quite the adventure! I thought that the one thing I learned pretty quickly while traveling was to assume nothing. But as I’ve always said, as soon as you think you’ve learned a lesson, life will test you on your knowledge. What I thought I bought in Ao Nang was a bus ride to Surat Thani and then at Surat Thani hop on an overnight ferry to Ko Tao.

Actually, what happened was that I hopped on a mini-bus to Krabi where they took me to wait for a bigger bus to Surat Thani. I then hopped on a bigger, air conditioned bus to Surat Thani… all is well so far. After a few hours on the bus we stopped and everyone got off. I’m pretty sure we were in Surat Thani but am still not positive. They rushed the 4 of us that were going to Ko Tao quickly onto another, bigger bus. There was no time for questions, not even time to go pee (good thing I didn’t have to go). I assumed this next bus would shuttle us to the pier at Surat Thani where we would then wait a few hours and get on our overnight ferry.

The first thing I did when I sat down on the bus was ask the guy next to me where he was going. “Bangkok”. WHAT? Bangkok? If you are familiar with the map you know that something wasn’t right. So before the bus even left I asked the driver again “We go Ko Tao?” “Yes, yes” he says as he laughs. So the bus leaves and we drive, and we drive, and we drive. We drove for about 3 hours. After about the first hour I made peace with the fact that I’m just going to end up where I end up. I have all my stuff with me and no reservations anywhere so whatever. Once we stopped again the 4 of us going to Ko Tao (now 6) were ushered off the bus and into the back of a pickup truck with benches and a cover. It’s dark by now, about 10:30 pm. At this point we are now in Chumpon and the truck thing takes us about 15 minutes away to what seemed like a pretty remote fishing boat pier. Remember, no one is telling us anything and when you try to ask they pretend like they don’t understand.

Next we boarded the ‘ferry’ which was actually a cargo boat transporting bottles of water and soda (no beer) and doubling as our overnight ferry. We slept on the deck floor of the cargo boat for 7 hours. I couldn’t believe it. In no way was I mad or upset I was just in utter disbelieve that these were actually my circumstances. All I could do was laugh and be happy that Aaron wasn’t with me. I don’t think he would  have appreciated the craziness of it all. Silly me to assume the overnight ferry would actually have proper places to sleep.

Notice the black and white cat at my side who slept with me all night.

 

So I arrived in Ko Tao at 5:45 the next morning in a complete daze. The sun wasn’t even up yet. And the hotels don’t know if they will have a room until someone checks out which isn’t usually until around 9:30 am or so. So I hung out and ended up meeting a nice girl who offered to share her room with me. She was solo as well but had a room with 3 beds. So I paid her 300 baht and there you go. She left today so I moved one resort down the beach and have my own bungalow for 700 baht/night ($21). Perfect! The beach is about 30 steps to my right and the yoga studio is about 40 steps to my left. I stay for 7 days!