Today we said farewell to Malaysia and headed to our first stop in Thailand, Koh Lanta. We had booked our tickets through a travel agency to make life a little easier and were told that it would take around 6 and a half hours altogether consisting of 2 ferries and 1 bus. Given that our previous journeys in south east Asia have went pretty smoothly, we were hopeful to be relaxing on the beach in Koh Lanta by half 3. How wrong we were.

We were told to be ready to be picked up at half 7 from our hostel for our taxi ride to the ferry terminal. Our taxi eventually turned up just after 8 although we were expecting this as he had turned up a day early and woke us up at exactly the same time yesterday. We made it to the terminal in plenty of time for the 9 o clock ferry to Sutan in Thailand and boarded with no issues. For some reason, the ferry didn't leave the port until 9.15 and this caused us major issues all day. After getting off at Sutan, we had to queue to get through passport control and get our visa exemptions for Thailand. It took a bit longer than other border crossings but we were pleased as we got a 30 day visa exemption rather than 15 days due to a recent policy of the Thai government. We were then boarded onto the back of a van and our bags were, rather haphazardly, tied to the back for the short journey to the bus station.

Unfortunately, due to the ferry leaving late, we had missed our bus by five minutes at the most. This led to us having to sit around the bus station in Satun for 2 hours for the next bus. As we had no Thai currency, Beth decided to ask a woman in the station where the nearest ATM was. She then told Beth to jump on the back of her scooter to go into town to withdraw some cash. Beth was a bit perturbed by the lack of a helmet but she made it there and back and this was all out of the kindness of the woman's heart.

The bus eventually arrived and we boarded for a pretty comfortable journey to Trang. The only downside was that the drivers must supplement their income by picking people up along the way (exactly the same as South America), so we were stopping every few minutes to pick people up so that the bus was rammed. We eventually got to the bus station in Trang after 2 and 3/4 hours on the bus. This was around 2.30pm so we were miles behind where we were supposed to be.

We were then cajoled into the back of a tuk tuk with two locals and our bags dumped onto the back of the grate. Luckily one of the locals was willing to hold onto my bag or I would be wearing the same clothes for the next five months. We finally thought that we were within striking distance of Koh Lanta only for our hopes to be dashed as soon as we were dropped off at the office we had booked with. As soon as we walked in they said that there would not be a minivan until 4.30 to take us across to Koh Lanta. We didn't understand why but they assured us there wasn't an earlier minivan. They also told us that our all encompassing ticket to Koh Lanta did not include one of the ferries to the island. I in particular was infuriated as how the hell are we meant to get to Koh Lanta if the ferry ticket isn't included. It's a bloody island!!! It was only a pound between us but the principle stinks!!!

We found a cafe and grabbed some lunch before we went back to the booking office and jumped on the minivan at around half 4. To say the minivan was hot would be an understatement. It was tiny, particularly with all our luggage in, and what we had expected to be a half hour journey by bus was actually 2 hours to reach the ferry terminal for the first ferry from the mainland. The driver tried to speed the journey up by driving like and absolute maniac. I would love to see some kind of head to head driving contest between drivers in Asia an South America. It would definitely be to the death!! He also managed to squeeze in at least one beer on the way - just to take the edge off!!

We boarded the first ferry around half 6 which took us to an unspecified island very slowly as the sun was setting. After getting off the ferry, we were certain that the worst was over only to find that with 5 minutes, we were stuck in the queue for the next ferry. We were actually stuck in this queue for around an hour and half and by this time all the locals had decided to just walk onto the ferry and there was only us and two Spanish girls left on the minivan. This ferry took literally five minutes and we were finally on Koh Lanta. It then took another 5 minutes before our driver found our accomodation, Lanta Bee Garden, for the next week and we were able to ditch our stuff and find a shop with some beer in. This was at 9 o clock so we were only around 5 and a half hours late. We've had some bad journeys on our trip but this is the worst so far. Thank god for the beer at the end of the rainbow!!!