"I wasn't always cargo"

It's been 3 weeks since Pat got here and we moved so fast that I barely had an opportunity to write anything much less communicate with the western world. I've uploaded plenty of pictures to my Flickr account with long descriptions so I'll spare everyone the details. I will however describe what is involved with covering large distances in a short time without the use of air travel.

We spent 4 nights in the Thailand's second biggest city and northern provincial capital, Chiang Mai. That city was awesome and we managed to do a lot in our short time there. On the 5th day, we boarded an overnight train to Bangkok at 4:30PM.

Traveling great distances via a second class sleeper train really is the way to go. For about 800B, you are given a large chair to sit in during the daylight hours which faces another chair of the same type directly opposite. A table is placed between the two chairs for food or whatever use you may have. As night comes, the table is removed and the chairs turn into one bed while another is pulled down from the ceiling. You can easily close the curtains and sleep your way across the country.

So anyways, we boarded our train at 4:30pm and just chilled for awhile. Apparently, Pat learned of an amazing trick for making train travel even more pleasant than it already is. I wasn't sure of the specifics but know that it involved 700ml of Thai whiskey and a liter of Coke.

Bringing our own alcohol made us no friends on that train. The ladyboy waiter/train attendant was not very happy at all since he/she was not going to get any beer sales off of us. He even went so far as to hit Pat several times with a menu and then pout his way down the aisle. Unphased, we were even able to acquire ice for our drinks with the help of a couple of Aussies in the berth across from us. The rest of the train ride was pleasantly drunk and resisting the advances of the mustached ladyboy got more fun as the night went on.

We arrived in Bangkok's Hualamphong train station at around 6:30am. We killed some time, got some breakfast and boarded a 9 hour train to Surat Thani. This town offers mainland access to the islands of Koh Samui, Koh Tau and Koh Pha Ngan, the latter of which was our eventual destination. We were hoping to catch a speed boat there straight from the train but after hitting the ground in Surat Thani and taking a public commuter bus to the pier we quickly realized that we were too late to make it to Koh Pha Ngan that night.

Koh Pha Ngan is the home of the infamous Full Moon Party which occurs monthly on Had Rin (the beach's name) and plays host to thousands of travelers in one night. Finding reasonably priced shelter near the beach around the full moon can be very difficult or impossible depending on how late you are. Knowing this, we planned to be on the island several days before to get a bungalow in a good location and every day lost made it much harder.

After considering all options we decided to take the overnight ferry even though we had already been traveling for over 24 hours. A description of the ferry and pictures are located on my Flickr page so I wont get too far into it but suffice it to say, it was a boat filled with cargo and tons of backpackers all with the same goal as us.

The ferry pulled into Koh Pha Ngan at 530AM and we hit the ground running seeing every other backpacker as opposition in our goal to find the best/cheapest place in a good location. After several hours, plenty of running and hearing repeatedly “sorry room is fool,” we finally found a livable bungalow and a bed to lay down on after 31 hours of travel.

It's funny how your budget increases the longer you walk around and the hotter it gets. Oh well, I guess you have to make compromises sometimes.

That's it for now, be sure to check my Flickr and Youtube pages for updated content.