Phuket

Let the stream of consciousness begin. Okay. Go.

Hat Kata Beach, Phuket, Thailand. Nov. 17. 8:30pm. I’m sitting here in my boxers, drinking a tall bottle of Chang beer. I feel like Homer Simpson or Ernest Hemingway. Maybe both. I’ve just had a cold shower. I have a blister on the bottom of my foot the size of Arkansas. Meg is watching BBC world news. What a day.

To recollect: Caught the overnight bus from KL to Hat Yai, Thailand. A 10 hour busride. We bought tickets, with our departure being at Platform 12. Closer to departure time, our ticket agent shouts something at us like ‘Follow the bus driver! There he is! Go!’ A group of backpackers start to follow this bus driver, we quickly throw on our backpacks but get stuck on the narrow escalator behind the slowest and largest family in the world (largest in terms of numbers, not weight)! Move it, squirts! At the bottom of the escalator we have lost sight of the backpackers and the bus driver. The bus leaves in 10 minutes. We go to platform 12. No bus. WTF does not describe; a new acronym needs to be made: WTFSA! Meg runs back up to the ticket agent; she is told the bus is parked outside the station somewhere since it is too big to get inside. That’s what she said. We dash outside and find the bus. A helpful bystander points us to the busdriver. He looks different. We ask if there is a washroom on board? He says I don’t know. Maybe. He looks. No bathroom. This isn’t actually the bus driver; just a fellow passenger. We stop showing him our tickets.

Meg needs the washroom. I told her to go an hour previous, but the bathroom cost money and she didn’t go on principle. Now we have a 10 hour bus ride ahead of us, and no WTFSA washroom. Holy Dooley. I go on the bus as Meg flies to the nearest hotel to use the washroom in the lobby. I sit on the bus contemplating the scenarios in which the bus starts to drive off without her. In one scenario, I shout at the bus driver to stop, who kicks me off and drives off with our bags. In another, the fellow passengers triumphantly help me hold down the bus driver as we wait for Megan’s return. In actuality, Meg arrived back on time and the bus didn’t leave for another 30 minutes.

Bus leaves. Time to sleep. Hmm… not bad. Seats recline almost to a laying position. Oh? They give you blankets. Thank you. Thank you very much. Getting comfortable…. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! WTFSA? They’re playing the Expendables 2? Isn’t that still in theatres? Machine guns, grenades, Stallone slurring… what a great way to fall asleep. There is no headphone option. These Expendables are blasting throughout the whole bus, as it rolls out of KL. Eventually, fall asleep. Somehow.

Quick aside, the information on our blog tells us we have a large reader following in Russia. Shout out to all those Russian readers! Speak up and leave some comments!

We pass through the Thai border, get an automatic 15 day visa. At 830 in the morning, in Hat Yai, I buy some polysporin for the blister on my foot. We unsuccessfully haggle a time and price to take us to Phuket. We pay their price, their time. How long does it take? 7 hours? The tv is broken. Otherwise, this would have been a good time for Expendables 2. Expendables 2 needs to be seen in daylight hours if at all. Sorry Sly.

Reading is a great time to pass the time bussing in Thailand. I finished Three Men in a Boat by one Jerome K. Jerome. Quite enjoyed that. I start reading Tristram Shandy on my ereader. Tragically, Meg can’t read in a moving vehicle without feeling violently ill. She has her copy of Into the Wild -- which she borrowed from the Take a Book, Leave a Book library in Fernie, BC. We still owe a book for that one. – but she can’t read it. I tell her she needs to read The Beach by Alex Garland. It’s a prerequisite to be a backpacker in Thailand. Everyone reads it down here. The book is way better than the terrible movie starring Leo DiCaprio. Sorry Leo.

7 hours later, we make it to Phuket. The Lonely Planet guidebook tells us it should take 40 baht to make it to the beach. This book is obviously 6 years old since the price is actually 600 baht. We walk 5kms. My blister is loving this. How far into town? Another 5 kms? The sun is setting and the stray dogs are coming out. We barter it down to 500 baht, as a pickup truck converted into a passenger carrier takes us to the beach here at Hat Kata. Thank you for dropping us off! Good luck to you too!

There’s a guesthouse. How much for the night? 21,000 baht. I see. So, that’s 800 bucks Canadian roughly. Oh, well, we’ll keep looking. We hike 10 minutes, sweating profusely. 1900 baht for the next one. Keep on hiking. My shirt is more sweat than shirt. WTFSA. Lots of white people around these parts. It’s nice they all have rooms. They obviously aren’t backpackers as they look at us distastefully. Well, we haven’t showered in two days. Finally: a room for 650 baht, Meg barters it down to 550.

Good room for a good price. I run out and buy some cold beers. Cold showers. More polysporin. The beach must be nearby. We’ll check it out in the morning. Good night.