Last day in Koh Samui

We woke up to more heavy rain and had breakfast at 9.30am at 'The Islander' bar restaurant. Jay had toast and muesli with yoghurt and Helen had noodle soup with chicken. After breakfast we packed our stuff and checked out at 11am. We then bought some snacks from a '7 Eleven' store for our journey to Bangkok.

We got picked up at midday by a minibus to take us to the pier. We were told at the pier that the boat had been cancelled due to the bad weather conditions and high waves. We were annoyed with this announcement and refused to leave the pier because the locals were still waiting. The staff at the pier put a note up on the ticket office which said 'come back tomorrow morning'. They also told the tourists to go back to their hotels. We were confused as to what was going on. During the wait, Jay got chatting to a friendly guy called Daniel from Texas who was on holiday.

After waiting for quite a while at the pier and most of the tourists had left to go back to their hotels, they announced that there will be a boat leaving at 4pm. There was an earlier boat at 3.30pm which we tried to get on but for some reason we did not have the correct ticket for this boat. A member of staff tried to explain in broken English and tourists shouting over her that we had to pay for the 3.30pm boat or wait for the 4pm boat and not pay. It was difficult to understand what was going on and was manic trying to get on a boat to get out of rainy Koh Samui. It was a frustrating situation to be in. One Australian couple who had hung around at the pier, had a flight to catch from Surathani and were getting desperate to get on the 3.30pm boat. They paid and luckily managed to get on the boat.

When boarding the 4pm boat, a member of staff was not informed that our ticket was valid for the boat and did not let us board. This was really frustrating as we had been told that we could get on this boat by a different member of staff. Fortunately, this was sorted when her colleague came to explain everything. It was a great relief to actually get on the boat as we did not want to get stranded on Koh Samui with the continuing storm covering Southern Thailand.

We arrived at 'Donsak' International Port at 5.15pm where a bus took us to Surathani, the roads were flooded apart from the main roads. There was a large group of people at Surathani who needed to catch a bus. A tuk tuk driver took us to our VIP bus which was around the corner, we met Sue from Brittany France in the tuk tuk and the four of us had a laugh despite the rain. We were all very pleased that the bus was waiting for us. The bus was really comfortable with fully reclining seats and blankets provided. We slept in our damp clothes but we were not complaining as we were grateful to have had made it on the bus to Bangkok!