Today was perhaps the most exciting day of our trip....

We woke up and casually wandered around town to a few airline offices looking for a plane ticket to leave that day for Koh Phangan. Tickets were not available until late that night but one of the reservation agents thought that a bus left at 10am for Surat Thani which is where you catch the boat to the island. It was currently 9:35am and the bus station was on the other side of town. Matt and I both jumped on the back of a moped with a nice Thai man and raced to the bus station. We got there at 9:46am and was told there was a bus at 10am. Our bags and all of our laundry were still spread out all over our hotel room and it would take some time to get there and back. We jumped in a Tuk Tuk who drove us back, we packed our bags in about 30 seconds, checked out, and made it back to the bus station at 10:01am. Despite telling the lady at the bus station 15 minutes earlier that we would be right back, she gave us a blank stare and told us the bus had already left. Two guys overheard us talking to her and said, "we can help you catch the bus." Please picture the scene: Matt and I are each on mopeds with our drivers who are holding our enormous backpacks while they drive 45 mph through the street of Phuket. Dangerous, probably. Fun, yes. After about 10 minutes or so we caught up to the bus, jumped on and rode with a bunch of locals while watching Thai music videos. After 5 hours, the bus randomly stopped and the driver told us to get off. It was raining and our bags got thrown off the bus onto the curb. Before we knew it we were standing in the rain and had no idea what was going on. This is where the Thai magic comes into play. Everyone knows everyone. This guy holding an umbrella walked up to us 2 minutes later and handed us boat tickets and told us that our next bus would arrive shortly. Sure enough a bus pulled up in 1 minute full of backpackers and we went straight to the pier, no problems. The ferry ride was about 3 hours even though we only went 60 miles. Once we got to our resort it was all worth it. Bungalow on the beach. Awesome bars, pool tables, darts, ping pong, massage, everything you could want.