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We left the guest house Monday evening in a tuk tuk which took us to the train station for our overnight journey back to Bangkok. We dived into the tuk tuk with our rucksacks crammed in beside us! We arrived at the station early and got on and made ourselves at home. We got a second class bed but actually it was quite nice, nicer than the ones in Vietnam we'd been on previously. At first we thought we had a section to ourselves with 4 beds, but after a few stops a business type man got on the bottom bunk (who pretty much went straight to bed and closed his curtains), and then another chap got on the top bunk (and again pretty much went to bed). We had a few games of cards, ate some snacks. Just as we started to settle a group of French couples got on that looked about 50ish and they were laughing there heads off (probably drunk) and they ended up being in the cabin next to us. They were banging and laughing and wandering up and down the carriage for ages like teenagers (when we wanted to get some sleep!) In the end they settled and we fell asleep - well I did, most likely Graeme was asleep ages before with his earplugs hehe!
We woke the next morning in time for the arrival of 6.40 into Bangkok. We waited a while, confused everytime the train stopped in stations, then the business chap told us that it'd be a few more hours to Bangkok. So we went back to sleep for a bit. We awoke to have some breakfast and continued waiting. The train eventually arrived at about 10am - very late! When we got into the station we went to see if we could book the next sleeper train to Ko Tao (thinking another 24hour sleeper bus was not an option). Turned out all the trains were fully booked…so sleeper bus it was! Great!
We pottered around Bangkok for the day trying to kill time. We popped in a tuk tuk and got the guy some free fuel vouchers going to some suit shops again, we went walking around the main bit where we'd been before - it was like we'd never left!
That evening we went back to the station to catch our bus for the night. From the outside it looked quite nice yey. And everyone getting on was pretty much travelling too we got chatting to a few people. And there was a loo! We then boarded and it was basically just a seat that reclined back. I can't believe I'm about to say this but the old style sleeper bus with no loo, and all people that don't speak English I prefer!!!
It was a bumpy ride with a 40 min stop half way (don't know why we needed 40 mins for the loo!). I didn't even bother trying the loo on the coach! We managed to get some sleep and were woken about 3am arriving at the ferry port. Our ferry was leaving at…7am. So we had a long wait in the station. After 3 hours of trying to get to sleep on hard chairs and floors we decided to head out and watch the sun rise, which was wonderful until we walked back to the waiting room and saw another room to the right called the sleeping room with nice cushioned floor to nap on……Doh
We finally got a ferry across to Ko Tao and went searching for a guest house.
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