Day 9
Arose at some ungodly hour, 5:15am I think it was as we had to be ready for the 6:00am pickup (I thought this was meant to be a holiday!) No breakfast of course and our minibus came at about 6:15 and took us to a spot in Krabi where we would meet another bus. On we got, it was the same type as the first one, just with different people on it. After a couple of hours we got to Trang where we changed buses again and then after another couple of hours we got to Hatyai. Then the fun started! No one at the bus station spoke any English so we needed to find out where we caught the bus to Songkhla. There was a lot of road works going on and it was about 35 degC. Someone at the bus station had pointed us down the road and eventually got on a tuk tuk but after a short distance were transferred to another bus, all with non English speaking people. Lisa tried to find a screen on her phone that had the name on it. Oh for a bit of old tech pen and paper! My bloody phone kept screen freezing which it does in hot and humid weather and then when I turned on Google Maps it sucked all my 25 dollar credit from my travel sim which was a useless Australian one which I regret buying. Note to self, get one at Krabi airport upon arrival! Much better data allowance than $1 / mbyte which is completely useless. (just wait until I get on TripAdvisor!) Anyhow, none of this was helping my mental health and when we finally found our hotel it was a great relief! Lovely air conditioned foyer and a charming receptionist and my blood pressure returned to non stroke threatening levels! Checked into our room and tried to call Lisa's cousin to let him know that we had arrived. Unfortunately it looked like the travel sim had failed again as we kept getting the "Please check the number and try again" message. After a momentary spike again in my blood pressure it turned out to be that the pen that Lisa has used to write down the number on the piece of paper had momentarily failed to perform and one of the digits was missing! Success next time and we showered and made ourselves look a little more presentable and went to the foyer to meet our hosts.
Nigel told us we hadn't changed at all (perhaps he needs glasses!) and he came with his Vietnamese partner, Hang, who was charming. Nigel then somehow summoned a motorbike (Lisa's first time!) and we hopped on and went to Tang Kuan Hill where there is a lift that takes you up to the lookout. A lovely view of Songkhla from up there and after a walk around, went back down, got a Tuk Tuk to Nigel and Hang's apartment where we had a couple of beers before going to a nice Irish pub for dinner. We had an early night as Nigel had to work at 3:00am, teaching English online to Japanese students and we had to psych ourselves up for the reverse trip back the next day!