Coffee, Sweat, and Travel Roulette

6:30 am. Somewhere in Surat Thani. After shaking off Cheap Ticket Guy, I wandered only as far as the next street corner before I stopped for a brew and gathered my thoughts. There was little need to race around and hunt for a bus just yet; I still had the whole day still ahead of me. I kept an eye out for busses whilst supping the coffee, but nothing drove by. I hoped that the girl at the breakfast stall would be able to help, but she didn’t understand my questions – not even when I applied that hopelessly ridiculous, broken English accent (with equally comical hand signals) commonly adopted when speaking to others either too lazy or too ignorant to learn my native language. The cheek of them.

After coffee, I covered a few more streets in search of the ‘Beeg Bus Stacion’ but found nothing. I asked around a bit more and eventually came up trumps at a guesthouse. The kindly chap at reception pointed across the counter, through the door and over to the opposite side of the street. But even better than pointing at a bus stop, he pointed at a big orange bus! After thanking him profusely, I hightailed it through a sea of hard-swerving mopeds and jumped on the bus just as it began to pull away. Indiana Jones: you know nothing. Well, to be honest, the bus wasn’t actually pulling away when I got on. I just made that up. In truth, the bus was still standing there long after the needle on my lung-o-meter had swung back from the red, ‘near explode’ zone back into the more comfortable, browny-grey, ‘morning cough’ zone.

It was still early morning, school time I would say, judging by the amount kids in crisp, white uniforms that crowded a bus otherwise filled with nice smelling ladies and elderly gentlemen. I couldn’t have felt more out of place. They had all, no doubt, recently scrubbed down and donned clean clothes to start their new day, whereas Ihad just spent 12 hours sleeping partly clothed on a clammy night train from Bangkok. To make matters worse, we were packed in like sardines. I edged into the remaining standing space in the aisle, right in the middle of the tin.

Worse still, after the impromptu 100-yard backpack-dash, I was now sweating like a horse. Everyone could see it, and one young lad in particular, sat just down to my right, probably felt it from time to time, too. I would have liked to have bent down and apologise to him personally, but I knew that any sudden movement would only unleash another bead-fest on his little, and already wet, neck.

The ticket girl edged closer.

“Big bus station?” I enquired, trying my utmost not to drip on her too much.

She gave a nod, relieved me of 12 Baht, and looked up and down my soggy, still slightly panting body with a mixed expression of shock, confusion and horror – similar only to that of someone witnessing a slow-motion, 15 car motorway pile up. Unsurprisingly, she made her way out of the drip-zone at a startling pace. By now, I think the small boy to my right had started to cry. They looked like teardrops, but, given my current rate of leakage, I couldn’t be sure.

Thankfully, within 10 minutes we pulled into the main Surat Thani bus station. I was glad not only to be at the station, but to be off that bus. I had done it. Now it should be plain sailing to Krabi, my jumping off point for the islands. If only life was that easy. With everything at the station written solely in Thai – schedules, bus bays, you name it – I had no choice but to reintroduce the silly accent and again start asking for pointers.

After a good hour of harassing a string of staff, motorbike taxi drivers, fellow passengers and songtheaw drivers, I learned I’d have more chance of getting to Krabi by flapping my arms, caw-ing like a seagull and flying there myself than by bussing it there from Surat Thani. No buses, or at least none that I could find, headed that way from this particular station. Cheap Ticket Guy at the station spoke the truth. This called for another change of travel plan and a swift round of travel roulette.

Rather than sit around and wait indefinitely for a bus to Krabi that may or may not arrive, I chose instead to get on the next southbound bus – wherever it went. It went to Phuket Town, so I did too – but not before stopping back at the Surat Thani train station to pick up passengers…all of whom were now a 27 Baht round-trip better off than I, and none of whom by 9am had mentally scarred a bus conductor for life.