Khao San Road & Travelling to Samui

On our second full day in Bangkok we moved from the Royal Hotel to a hostel on Khao San Road to be right in the heart of the main tourist street; perfect for shopping at street markets, eating out and clubbing! When it came to moving to our new accommodation, we realised that Khao San Road was actually only a 5 minute walk from our previous hotel, despite our funny taxi journey the night before, in which Marc had to direct the taxi driver after going the wrong way!

The night out was really fun. We drank beer from towers and cocktails from buckets.  The final club we went in  was called Cliff Club.  It seemed to be very popular amongst locals and we were practically the only westerners in there, probably because it was one of the only clubs with an entry fee! We managed to haggle free entry for Amy though.  There was a Thai band playing very Hoobastank sounding music, which was a bit of a change from the usual club music.

At the end of the night we bought some pad thai, which we proclaimed to be the best pad thai that we'd ever eaten. I imagine this was more to do with the alcohol though! Still, very good drunk food!

The next day, we spent our hangover doing a bit of shopping at the markets and then in the late afternoon we headed off to catch a coach to the South, where we would then get on a ferry to Koh Samui. A predicted journey time of thirteen and a half hours!

Our bus turned up and we were a little surprised to see a minibus rather than a coach. We got on, along with several other people, and off we set.  We were only travelling for 5 minutes when the driver pulled over and opened the door. He told us to make room for another two people in the already full bus! Every seat was taken and all of the floor space was full of luggage, so all we could do was squeeze up.  A couple of people were unfortunate enough to have a random person half sitting on their lap. We set off again, but 10 minutes or so later, the driver pulled over again and opened the door.  Everybody half laughed at the prospect of further co-passengers for this 13 hour journey (either laugh or cry!), but to our relief, the driver said 'everybody out, wait for bigger bus!'.  There were lots more people waiting and we were all stickered up to help herd us into groups.  

We eventually boarded a double decker coach with comfy seats and air con, so we had a much better journey than we were anticipating when we squeezed into the minibus!  However, at 6am, the coach pulled into an undisclosed location and we all had to get out and wait with no further information.  We took every opportunity to try to get some sleep!:

4 hours later another bus that looked like it came straight from the 60s turned up and this took us on the final hour and a half of the trip to the ferry port.  We were quickly ushered onto the ferry and we finally arrived at our beach bungalow in Koh Samui at about 12.30, after 18 hours of travelling!!