January 29, 2019
We did one thing on this day and I could sum it up in one sentence and move on to the 30th if I wanted to. However, I don't wanna do that. I'd rather drag it out.
We woke up and jolted to attention! This was travel day! Get all your stuff and check under the beds! We're off to Bangkok!
I booked the joint ferry+bus ride the night before at precisely 9:08pm. It was a disaster. I'd gone over the travel packages the day before with the nice Aussie girl who worked the front desk at our hotel. She's a nutso planner like me, so we had fun scoping out the options. I had a plan and I was juuuuuuust about to buy the perfect concise tickets package, I was checking out any everything. I needed Kiana's passport info, so I texted Olivia at 8:57pm... by the time she responded my browser refreshed and the tickets were GONE. Not just those tickets, but all the tickets for the 29th were now unavailable for purchase. Turns out, as the clock struck 9:00, you could no longer book next-day tickets. UUUGHH. So now I had to buy from a different website and the travel schedule for the 29th was about to be strung out waaaaay longer than it should have. Much like this journal entry.
So we're in the taxi (another hard-to-get play by the taxi bros). It's just a 15 minute trip to the pier. Once we get there I grab our tickets since we did it all online the night before. Then we try to grab some breakfast somewhere. Spring rolls and rice! We are the last passengers aboard the boat because our orders took a while. The whole pier knew, they were walkie-talking to each other. We walked through one boat to hop across to ours. Being accustomed at this point to the boat life, we grabbed cozy seats on the inside of the ferry. The ride was 1.5 hours.
When we got off the boat we had 3.5 hours of waiting to do. This was where our ticket purchase mistake hit us the hardest. Luckily there was a convenience shop inside the Surat Thani pier waiting center. It sold beer a multitude of snackies. I went ham twice during our wait. Once for Nescafe, Leo beers, and pomegranate juice. Next for am array of spicy Thai snacks to try. Olivia and I rated the snacks by how good we expected them to be, and later by how tasty they actually were. It was a fun way to pass the time. Other than that, it was torrid in that place and we were kinda miserable trying to find some cool air.
A van came and got us and we were off to the center to Surat Thani. Here we'd find the train station. The van pulled over and left us at a restaurant. The restaurant was somewhere close to the station, but I couldn't find it. Then I noticed the restaurant was owned by the van/ferry company, so I got really annoyed. I ran out of the building to scope out for anywhere else we could be... But as I entered the train station I found out that alcohol was not allowed... AND they had no food. The shops around our restaurant were all closed... So in actuality- the van company's restaurant was indeed the best place for us to wait 4 hours. Fine.
Eventually they closed though, so we left to sit at the train station. They had squatty potties for Olivia, so that was good.
Here's the excitement of the day: We had 2nd class train tickets to Bangkok. Second class was SO great. And now we couldn't WAIT to see how our 1st class bed were gonna be like.
Here comes the train, we hop on. It was spooky, right out the gate. There was a kind of an ominous feeling about the carriage. I knew the tickets would likely score us our own rooms, but the other girls didn't know that until this point. They were excited! Walking down the aisle we found our rooms. Right next to each other! So we split off. Brooke and I entered our room... We immediately felt like we had just been detained. The little room looked like a jail cell. A bunk bed, a sink, a folding table, and lots of shelves for our bags. This all sounds great. However... it hadn't been updated in over 50 years, it seemed. So it was dark and faded and drab. Only cool part was the door between our two rooms could be opened.
The toilet was a major issue, even for me. The train was so shaky and the toilet/plumbing so antiquated (though still Western)... I had a bad experience in there that I don't need to write down to remember. Olivia never used it. She was miserable.
Anyways, we were so tired that we all conked out soon after boarding. None of us slept well though... I personally felt claustrophobic, but all of us were annoyed with how many times the train hooted throughout the night. It was incessant!
The experience wasn't ALL bad though, don't take that from this. It just wasn't what we anticipated from 'First Class' based on our experience in Second Class.
In the morning we wake up in Bangkok.
We woke up and jolted to attention! This was travel day! Get all your stuff and check under the beds! We're off to Bangkok!
I booked the joint ferry+bus ride the night before at precisely 9:08pm. It was a disaster. I'd gone over the travel packages the day before with the nice Aussie girl who worked the front desk at our hotel. She's a nutso planner like me, so we had fun scoping out the options. I had a plan and I was juuuuuuust about to buy the perfect concise tickets package, I was checking out any everything. I needed Kiana's passport info, so I texted Olivia at 8:57pm... by the time she responded my browser refreshed and the tickets were GONE. Not just those tickets, but all the tickets for the 29th were now unavailable for purchase. Turns out, as the clock struck 9:00, you could no longer book next-day tickets. UUUGHH. So now I had to buy from a different website and the travel schedule for the 29th was about to be strung out waaaaay longer than it should have. Much like this journal entry.
So we're in the taxi (another hard-to-get play by the taxi bros). It's just a 15 minute trip to the pier. Once we get there I grab our tickets since we did it all online the night before. Then we try to grab some breakfast somewhere. Spring rolls and rice! We are the last passengers aboard the boat because our orders took a while. The whole pier knew, they were walkie-talking to each other. We walked through one boat to hop across to ours. Being accustomed at this point to the boat life, we grabbed cozy seats on the inside of the ferry. The ride was 1.5 hours.
When we got off the boat we had 3.5 hours of waiting to do. This was where our ticket purchase mistake hit us the hardest. Luckily there was a convenience shop inside the Surat Thani pier waiting center. It sold beer a multitude of snackies. I went ham twice during our wait. Once for Nescafe, Leo beers, and pomegranate juice. Next for am array of spicy Thai snacks to try. Olivia and I rated the snacks by how good we expected them to be, and later by how tasty they actually were. It was a fun way to pass the time. Other than that, it was torrid in that place and we were kinda miserable trying to find some cool air.
Upon us creeps the moment we solve Olivia's toilet fear. Olivia's anger scale had been tipped to a 10/10 numerous times on the trip so far, many of these tippings were due in part to bathroom situations not being ideal. To make a long story short, Olivia is a bit of a germaphobe. She's off-put by toilet seats, lack of toilet paper, messy bathroom floors, et cetera. She will hold it for a dozen hours and almost develop a UTI before she will use a messy toilet (she did that). Every time we arrive at a new restaurant, coffee shop, train station, one of us would investigate the bathroom situation and then give the scoop to Olivia so that we could come up with plan to handle it. I'm trying to set the scene here, because like I said we're about to solve the problem.
I can't remember why Olivia decided to try the "squaty potty," but she tried it at this point in the trip and we had a revolution. Previously she'd been opposed because obviously you're gonna pee on yourself if you squat. But- She loved it. As she explained, you don't have to touch anything. It's easy, you walk in, drop your drawers, pee. No hovering over the seat or wiping down anything. All of the pee leaves your body in an organized fashion, "it's natural!" From here on out, Olivia was relieved (no pun intended) when we reported there was a squaty potty installed where we were! And there you have an entire paragraph about my sister's business!
A van came and got us and we were off to the center to Surat Thani. Here we'd find the train station. The van pulled over and left us at a restaurant. The restaurant was somewhere close to the station, but I couldn't find it. Then I noticed the restaurant was owned by the van/ferry company, so I got really annoyed. I ran out of the building to scope out for anywhere else we could be... But as I entered the train station I found out that alcohol was not allowed... AND they had no food. The shops around our restaurant were all closed... So in actuality- the van company's restaurant was indeed the best place for us to wait 4 hours. Fine.
Eventually they closed though, so we left to sit at the train station. They had squatty potties for Olivia, so that was good.
Here's the excitement of the day: We had 2nd class train tickets to Bangkok. Second class was SO great. And now we couldn't WAIT to see how our 1st class bed were gonna be like.
Here comes the train, we hop on. It was spooky, right out the gate. There was a kind of an ominous feeling about the carriage. I knew the tickets would likely score us our own rooms, but the other girls didn't know that until this point. They were excited! Walking down the aisle we found our rooms. Right next to each other! So we split off. Brooke and I entered our room... We immediately felt like we had just been detained. The little room looked like a jail cell. A bunk bed, a sink, a folding table, and lots of shelves for our bags. This all sounds great. However... it hadn't been updated in over 50 years, it seemed. So it was dark and faded and drab. Only cool part was the door between our two rooms could be opened.
The toilet was a major issue, even for me. The train was so shaky and the toilet/plumbing so antiquated (though still Western)... I had a bad experience in there that I don't need to write down to remember. Olivia never used it. She was miserable.
Anyways, we were so tired that we all conked out soon after boarding. None of us slept well though... I personally felt claustrophobic, but all of us were annoyed with how many times the train hooted throughout the night. It was incessant!
The experience wasn't ALL bad though, don't take that from this. It just wasn't what we anticipated from 'First Class' based on our experience in Second Class.
In the morning we wake up in Bangkok.
That made me laugh.
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