Traveling in Thailand is not very easy. Is not that there wouldn’t be busses, trains, taxis, boats or travel agencies but there are too many and something is always lost in translation. You think you make it easier for yourself by buying train-bus-boat combination ticket from the travel agency but somehow the ticket forgets to mention the two hour wait at another travel agency before the bus picks you up and another 45 minute wait when you suddenly have to change the bus. It won’t also mention the 4km motorbike transfer to the ferry pier nor that annoying quy on the boat that knows how to convince you to book a hotel room at double of the normal price against your better judgment. How the system works is beyond any western understanding. Sometimes it works quite ok and you get from place A to the place E via B, C and D. Then again sometimes you are just left in places B, C or D (which were not even in your original itinery) without any further explanation. The trip that should normally take 3 hours will inevitably take at least 5. Not because the bus is late or the roads are bad but because of the travel agencies want to sell you something more and they make sure that you sit and wait until you have at least bought yourself a coke. If you are not going to buy something or book at least a taxi drive for your next destination then they’ll just see how long can you wait.
There is quite good public transportation system in Thailand. However the problem is finding it. Most of the locals don’t speak English and if you ask travel agency… well you know that you are not going to get the public bus. Enough bitching? Ok so I’ll tell the story.
I decided to leave Ko Phi Phi and catch the nine o’clock boat to Krabi. I wanted to take the bus to Surat Thani railway station where I could get the overnight train to Bangkok. People here don’t want you to just to go to the bus station and buy your ticket. They want to sell you the trip and in the best case accommodation as well. They know how to convince you to its convenience oppose to you doing it yourself. The problem is you never know what you get or where you end up and you always pay double the price. In my case on the boat there was a guy selling taxi tickets to Krabi town from the pier. I said I don’t want to buy it because I want to go to the bus station which I knew where outside of the town. This was no problem to him; he could sell me the transportation to the bus station and the bus trip to Surat Thani. I still didn’t want to buy it because I wanted to go to the railway station in Surat Thani which is about 15km from the city. This was also no problem as the bus could drop me to the railway station first. So I ended up buying the ticket. Do I ever learn?
I knew I had screwed up when the taxi from the pier took me to a travel agency instead of bus station in Krabi. It was no surprise that we had to wait for an hour before getting into a bus which was not the public bus I wanted to take. The bus drove directly to another travel agency in Sura Thani where people going to the islands got their boat tickets. I got the instructions to complain to the agency I got my ticket from as there was no transportation to the railway station. It was pissing down rain and I had no idea where exactly I was or how to get out of there. There were no taxis and no one knew where to find one. After wondering around in the rain for half an hour I managed to find a café and a nice lady who knew I could take a taxi to the bus station and then the bus to the train station. She even stopped the car for me and explained the driver where I wanted to go. It is good to mention here that when I say taxi it is nothing like the taxis most of us are used to and I wouldn’t have had any idea that I could have stopped the vehicle in question and get a drive even if I saw it. It was again no surprise that the taxi and the public bus were very cheap compared to the taxi drives the travel agencies offer you.
So I finally got to the railway station and got my ticket to Bangkok. The train was three hours late but I was only happy to get back to the civilization. For now I decided to try and stay away from the travel agencies if possible.
