Oh What a Night...

Greetings from Ao Nang -- a gorgeous beach in Southern Thailand! Beautiful aqua seas with crazy tall limestone rocks jutting up into the bright blue sky, lush vegetation covering their peaks. It's a rock climbers' paradise in these parts -- I'm going to enjoy the views from the sand! Then tomorrow I'll be on a morning ferry over to Ko Phi Phi, the beach that earned its fame when the Leonardo DiCaprio movie, "The Beach," was filmed there. (It was also horribly ravaged by the tsunami, but I've heard it's pretty much back to 100% these days.)

So it's hard to believe it was just 24 hours ago that I was running around the streets of Bangkok in a camera frenzy. So much happened last night I feel like that was weeks ago. Last night's drama really started a few days ago as I was researching how to get to the beaches. I looked into flights - they're around $45 each way. But then everyone at my Guest House (hostel) told me it's crazy to spend that much b/c Thailand has an excellent bus system with VIP air conditioned tourist buses that run overnight, are quite comfortable, and are only about $12. I should have taken into account that these fellow backpackers were all about 10 years younger than I am, but I didn't, and booked myself a VIP bus ticket for the 15 hour trip south. My instructions were to be at the travel agency at 6pm on Friday for pick up. Done.

The travel agency was a bit of a walk from my hotel, and my duffle bag is extremely heavy and cumbersome, but I hauled it there on foot b/c I figured from there I'd be sitting on my butt for 15 hrs (Oh, yes, did I mention I'm a backpacker without a backpack?!). Boy was I disappointed when our "pick up" was a guy on foot who asked us to get our luggage and follow him. I had developed blood blisters on my right shoulder from the walk I'd just taken, so I threw my bag's strap over the left shoulder and fell in line. From our travel agency, we walked around the streets to 5 other travel agencies "picking up" other passengers, and then we all walked to the bus station. Needless to say, my shoulders now have matching blood blisters, and I'm planning to go through the bag and toss things that aren't absolutely 100% necessary to have!

When I saw the bus I felt a bit better. It was large, it had plush seats (even if there wasn't enough legroom), and the air con was working quite effectively. I chose a seat, and my seatmate didn't have body odor, so I was pleased and ready to roll. That's when the games began. The bus took off with no rules or instructions announced, so basically everyone just did what they pleased. The Europeans all began smoking, the young Americans (the "frat pack") began drinking, and the Thai driver's assistant put on a pirated dvd copy of "Miami Vice" with the volume at a level you wouldn't believe. You all know how loud I can be, so if I thought the volume was high...

Toward the middle of the movie, the "frat pack" sitting behind me got so rowdy they started trying to throw their beer bottles into the trash bag from about 15 feet away. The first bottle to miss, hit the floor and shattered, sending big & small pieces of brown glass in every direction -- nice when everyone's wearing flip flops. This first break caused an erruption of cheers & applause as if it were a Greek wedding and we were supposed to be smashing plates. So the bottles continued to fly, and soon there was glass everywhere -- very nice. The drinking also led to a lot of bathroom use, which led to a lot of bathroom odor in the bus' main cabin - ewwww!

I was basically horrified, and clearly reminded that I'm not a young'n anymore! After "Miami Vice," I thought things might settle down and folks might start trying to go to sleep, but no. The Bust-Your-Ear-Drums Theater guy put on "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" next. A lot of guns get fired in that movie, and between those explosions over the speakers, and the beer bottles being smashed, and the cigarette smoke and the bathroom odor, I was basically grossed out knowing it was only 1am, and I still had nine hours to go on this freak show!

Thankfully, after the second movie ended (around 2am) most of the "frat pack" had passed out, the movie guy swept some of the glass out of the main walkway, and I was able to catch a bit of sleep. But that was interrupted at 4:30 when the bus stopped and the driver turned on all the lights and started yelling at us in Thai. No one knew what was going on - we discussed amongst ourselves that it must be a bathroom break, and most of us decided we'd rather sleep through it. Then the driver came into the bus and started physically pulling people out of their seats and pushing them toward the door. I looked out my window and saw that all of the luggage had been unloaded and was sitting in the middle of the street, so then it became clear this was as far as he was taking us...

So there we all stood with our luggage in the middle of the night at a random truck stop type place. Most passengers were European, but through broken English we all discussed it, and none of us were told about this stop. We'd all just been told we'd been booked for a 15 hour VIP ride to the beaches. Hmmmm...had he gone to get gas or something??? About 15 minutes later, a minivan pulled up and the driver started yelling out various beach destinations. I heard "Krabi," my stop, and went over to him. He loaded 10 of us and our luggage into this one minivan, and off we went....all of us a bit unsure about whether or not this is how it's supposed to go. Thankfully, the "frat pack" wasn't moving very quickly, and they didn't catch the van, so we all dozed off fairly quickly.

Then, at about 6:30am, another stop, more Thai (which no one understands except the Thai driver), and then all the bags were being unloaded again. This time we were at a 7-11 type place seemingly in the middle of nowhere. So we all got out...again...and just waited for further transport to magically show up. The next vehicle came by at around 7:00am, and it was a pick up truck -- there was fear we were all going to be asked to cram ourselves in the back for an open-air finish to this VIP trip, but thankfully no. He appeared to be a taxi, and started asking us individually where we wanted to go, and giving out prices. Hmmmm...we all thought we were fully booked to our final destinations VIP style, but whatever, I was ready to do anything to get the trip back in motion. I joined forces with two Canadians who were travelling to a beach neighboring Ao Nang where I needed to go, and we locked him into a price and got into the truck still unsure about whether or not it was supposed to go down this way, and not sure how much farther we had to go!

Thankfully, it wasn't far, and by 8:30 I was at my hotel breathing a sigh of relief! One of the funniest things about the night was that in the very beginning, as we were being picked up at our various travel agencies in Bangkok, the guy organizing our departure collected our travel vouchers, and in return, handed each of us a strip of masking tape that he'd scribbeled something in Thai on. He motioned for us to stick these strips on our t-shirts, so everyone did. At first I thought these tape stickers were supposed to be our pass to board the correct bus. Later, I noticed different scribbles on different people's tape strips, so then I gathered they must name our final destinations, and apparently others thought the same because each time we were dumped off with no explanation or instruction in a language we could understand, we'd begin holding out our t-shirts, pointing to our strips of masking tape, and asking any & every Thai person what we needed to do to get to xxx beach. It's funny to think about the stock we were each holding in these homemade strips of masking tape, but we had nothing else but our travel agents' promises of a "VIP" overnight bus trip to go on.

Overall, it was quite an adventure, and I'm glad I can say I experienced bus travel in Thailand, but at a $30 price difference, I'll be taking the 1 hour flight back to Bangkok!

xoxo,
Mere