Transit Day: Bangkok to Koh Tao

Erin and I have found that the hardest part about traveling is moving from one place to another. The act of "traveling" or "being on vacation" isn't that difficult at all. However, getting from point A to point B is another story entirely. If you've been reading for a while, you may recall the story of the train from Beijing to Shanghai and then the bus to Suzhou.

Getting from Bangkok to the island of Koh Tao appeared effortless. All along the tourist area in Bangkok, there were shops advertising tickets and package tours. In our experience, these types of places can be more convenient, but they are also way more expensive than booking the ticket yourself. We've also read that some of the shops are a little shady, and visitors have been known to be ripped off. So, we decided to go to the bus station and book the trip ourselves.
Once at the bus station, we had a difficult time telling which way to go. As you might expect, most of the signage was in Thai, and we don't read Thai at all. But, we were fortunate enough to find a ticket window with the correct name above it, so we hopped on over and bought some tickets. The bus left from the station about two hours from the time we bought them, so we had just enough time to grab some lunch and get a SIM card for our phone. Fortunately, there was a luggage counter, or we'd have had to haul our bags for a couple of miles to complete our assigned pre-trip tasks.

Once we got onto the bus, we had a 7 hour journey ahead of us to Chumpon. Fortunately, there was a restroom on the bus, because we only stopped once. Along the way, we met the only other white guy on the bus, and we swapped a few stories during the break. Mark is from Toronto, and he is on a 3 month trip across Asia before beginning his newly found job. Mark is in the picture below, taken at our dinner stop. We farangs didn't know it was a dinner stop so we just hung out while the Thai's ate.

After the bus dropped us off in Chompon at around 8 pm, we hung out in town and grabbed a bite to eat while we waited for the next leg of our trip. We then had a ferry trip which lasted another 7 (or was it 8?) hours to reach Koh Tao. The ferry was relatively small, and it had mats on the floor so that we could sleep. Erin and I slept on and off, as the boat rocked quite a bit and it was seriously hot - that's right, no AC!

Needless to say, we made it safe and sound, but as I noted above it was not the easiest day. We really just wanted to sleep or eat and then sleep, but since we arrived in Koh Tao at around 5 am nothing was open.