We left The Nature Beach Resort, Ko Lanta at 7am on Friday 1st December. The plan was we would leave at this time and get to Ko Phangan no later than 6pm on a joint bus and ferry ticket. In true Thai style it didn’t quite run that smoothly. We got the minibus at 7am which we thought would take us to a nice ferry where we would be sunbathing for four hours across to Krabi. No such luck we got onto a car ferry so we were stuck on the minibus whilst it crossed to the mainland. We arrived on the mainland south of Krabi so then had to drive all the way. We got to Krabi bus station where we had to wait for a few hours for our bus to Surat Thani. This was Ok as we had time to eat and phone John and Tracey (friends from London) who we were meeting in Ko Phangan. We got the bus which stopped just short of Surat Thani and we all had to get off and wait in a bar for another bus. This was where we started to think things smelt a bit fishy. We were abandoned in this bar realising there was no way we would be getting the 3pm fast ferry we had paid for and there was nothing we could do as this travel set up had our ferry tickets. When we eventually left and got to Surat Thani, the next ferry was at 6.30pm, we got off the bus and the Thai fella gave us our ferry tickets which the price showed as 75 baht, we had paid for a 350baht ticket, they had obviously made money on us by buying cheap ferry tickets and making us miss the dearer one although we had paid for it. We then got on the slow ferry which was old and rusty and took 4 hours to get to the Island. O well I’ve got over that rant now however I would recommend anyone else book your own tickets separately if you want to get there quickly and not be messed about, on the other hand I think it worked out cheaper the way we did it.
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