Were here!
Finally. That Bus Ride ended up being a lot more of a hastle than the last one if you can believe that. We met at the travel agent's we booked the tickets from at 7 pm, just like they told us to. We made sure we got the agent to book us tickets straight to Phuket, with no bus changes or anything, otherwise we told the agent we would take a train and transfer. So we're led to a double decker bus, and these things are pimp in Thailand, the amount of colours and lights they put on the outside of these things makes XiBit look bad. Well maybe not...but you get the idea.

Anyway, The bus we got into was actually nice; it had more air conditioning and the seats actually reclined back far and there was a tv for a movie to be shown. By far nicer and fancier than the piece of junk we took to Chiang Mai. However, Once the bus ride started, so did the problems. A movie started playing(it was X-MEN 3 so we were stoked) and no sooner had we started enjoying said movie, aswell as some irish dudes next to us, but a girl in the back complains that it is too loud. This would have been an understandable complaint had it not been 7 o'clock. I don't know what time she goes to bed usually but whatever, this story isn't about her, it's about what happend after. Everyone that was watching the movie suddenly couldn't hear anything, so one by one we gone down stairs and ask if he could turn it up just a bit, but turns out none of the three drivers can speak any english, so instead he pushes a button and says " kaput" and the screen goes black. We try to communicate but it doesn't work out, so no movie. But that's okay because we had books and those little personalized reading lights they have in airplanes and buses, right? wrong, well half right because the other side of the bus didn't have any light. Bummer I thought, whatever though, lucky for us we're on the side with the lights haha. Hahahahahuhoh? oh too bad, no lights for anyone by like 9 o'clock. Oh man, it was kind of funny/annoying but I just decided that I had only paid three times the price of the ticket to Chiang Mai for one to Phuket of the same duration, and I guess if I get there without any troubles it's worth not have a few luxuries right?. But of course, this was not the case.

I actually slept for quite a lot of the ride but at around 6:30 we were woken up and told to get off of the bus and that everyone would be tranfering to their respective buses for wherever their destination was. "But didn't we make sure we had direct to Phuket tickets?" Joanna said to me. "Well, yeah but whatever" I said. I guess we would have to see where this leeds.

That's the one thing that Joanna very cleverly pointed out: that when you go to a travel agent in Thailand you never really know what you're going to get. And if the people driving the bus or sung tao tell you to get out or wait here or eat here or wait for another bus, all you can do is do what they tell you. All the passengers are just kind of hearded around without much clue as to where they are, but they know that if they want to get where they paid to go, you just have to follow. So follow we did. We were told that a connecting bus, bus being the keyword here, would arrive at seven o'clock at the very same store that we had been dropped off in front of. so we waited and waited, and at just after seven a sung tao, not a bus pulls up and asks for people going to phuket to get in, "man, this is going to be a loooong ride to Phuket" I thought to myself. Joanna and I got in, and three other guys get in with us. Turns out that two of them are from B.C. and they just arrived in Bangkok a couple of days ago from Australia. We swap stories and then we all come to the conclusion that this sung tao may infact be our ride to phuket, which we were told was a four hour trip from the town we had been dropped off in.

Thankfully, the sung tao was not our ride, and instead we were driven to an outdoor cafe place with a couple of "mini buses" parked in the driveway. I have heard horrorish stories of this very situation happening; a person signs up for a bus trip but the bus turns out to be a "mini bus" which is actually a mini van with nine seats instead of six, and being driven the whole trip in a van. "crap." we said. It looked like we'd been had by that freaking travel agent afterall. So we get out of the sung tao and the driver mumbles something incoheren't about a mini bus picking us up sometime. sometime. awesome. We all take a seat at a table and there are another 10 or so people who look to be in the exact same position. some of them have been there since seven, another says he's been there since 6. We start to make bets as to how long we have to wait. It turns out the reason we are waiting is for another mini bus to show up and be able to take all of us at once. We only have to wait for an hour before the other van comes. we cram into one of the mini vans and they do have air conditioning which would be nice but the vents close or their own and there are eleven people in the van including the driver. We drive for 2 hours and the drivers stop for lunch. I say drivers because none of the passengers had any say in the matter, and the drivers did seem hungry. It was ok, Jo and I dared to eat a hot dog each, a hot dog that has yet to come up I'm happy to say.

We finally get to phuket and the deal was that the vans take us into phuket town. So we stop instead at a travel agent just outside of town. We're told that we need to get out to figure out where we are going to stay. This stop was not part of the deal, and neither was more travel agents trying to rip us off. One of the travel agents told us that if we wanted to go anywhere but the travel agents we would need a taxi, or pay the van we had come in another 70 baht for what we all thought we had already paid for. We refused and then they acted as if it were an accident and that the drive into Phuket town was free, of course. And then our driver drives us into a part of the town, but no where specific and tells us to please get out. And then leaves us standing there without a clue as to where we are, and in a part of town that the street signs are not in english aswell as Thai. We were kind of stunned really, that any of us had paid for the trip. We were told at the agent that we would arrive in phuket at 10:30 the following morning as opposed to 12:30 which it was now. Joanna and I caught a sung tao with a british couple and this time we made sure we had found a vacant hostel before paying the driver.
All in all it has been a very long two days, but it didn't stop me and Joanna from going to patong beach and swimming. What a bus ride that was.
A word to the wise, never forget to barter the crap out of a travel agent because you never know what you are in for.
Jo and are going to take a couple of ferries to get to ko lanta just south of Phuket. There we hope we ca relax and snorkel and scuba.
I'm out.
Ben