Timezones

There is something exciting in the 6 hours time difference thats between the most of us... it is 1.33pm here, I am already done with the workouts for today, had food and a thai massage already, while you are just about to get out of bed or leave for work.. Exciting is that anticipation, me waiting for the responses on my mails to come in, for the bubbles to pop up with chat windows talking about news and olds........ it makes me smile.. :)

Towards the end of 2010....

From Koh Lipe, we took the tigerlinetravel.com option for 1600 THB each, that is 40 EUR; first a boat (again leaving 2 hours later than scheduled) for Hat Yao Pier, from where a minibus - in a remarcably good shape, brandnew?, with AC and room enough for all of us - took us to Phuket, believe it or not, right to the front of the hostel we were to be staying at. The boatride took about 2.5 hours and the drive another 5 - the last 1.5 of this was driving on Phuket island, a true mess when it comes to traffic.

The hostel, Gypsy Room Backpackers is a 20 min walk from Patong beach, nicely hidden but, SO clean that I still cant believe such a place exists in Asia. Having a little mess with the booking we ended up in the dorm for the first night - photos below, try to believe what you see; clean, nice, good beds, nice staff, and meal options for 50 THB they cook in the kitchen on request - for 10 EUR /night including breakfast, not a bad place at all... ;)



From Phuket after a bit of a mess-up with the bus reservations, we did get to Surat Thani in the end, and right where the bus dropped us off, booked our ferry tickets to Koh Tao (400 baht each), and also the return boat/bus to Phuket (another 750 baht each)... needless to say, we didnt check the invoice - which only mentioned return to Surat Thani - so we lost a few hours on trying to sort ourselves out on the way back... but hey.

Our hotel, the only option mentioned on hostelworld.com, was Grand Thara, more a dodgy looking old hotel with 6 floors than a hostel really... but again, for 10 eur/night for the two of us - I just dont have words to complain.

The hotel being as dodgy as it was, we headed out to find some dinner - Surat Thani is really not a place where you'd want to spend more time than absolutely necessary.... One recommendation came form a sweet little thai girl with braces and hardly any English (regarless, that she was workding at the English language institute...), and so we ended up in the famous (...) Lucky restaurant - packed with locals... while waiting for our table Dave spotted a guy sitting alone at one of the tables, and to cut the long story short, we shortly made friends with Wes: handsome and Australian and a policeman with hillarious stories, from Sydney, heading to Koh Phangan, to meet his mate for NYE.. there was also mentioned a free bungalow for the NY weekend - and so, it was getting rather realistic to head to the fullmoon party in the end.......... :D
Lesson learnt: ALWAYS TALK TO STRANGERS!!!!!! :)

Geo's happy new year message on FB.... :)

Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero. - B Andreas