Well I am currently on the aeroplane flying to Australia, but my oh my have me and Josh done a lot of travelling these past few days.
We left koh Samui on the 2nd December about midday in the pouring rain. Here we had to catch a boat over to Surat Thani, where we would then be travelling on a coach to Bangkok.
We met a guy from hong kong and a guy from India, who we chatted and exchanged stories on our travels.
You would think because these company's transfer people to different places everyday they would be quite organised in getting people to where they are suppose to be, but that is far from the truth!
There are a lot of scams going on with these companies, trying to take your ticket off you saying a little sticker is your ticket, which you then get taken to somewhere you think your catching your bus from, for the manager moaning saying this is not your ticket and trying to get you to pay more money to go in a taxi instead! Thankfully this didn't happen to me and Josh, as we kept our original ticket, but we witnessed it happen to so many people, and it's not very fair, when you have already paid quite abit of money.
Our journey wasn't the smoothest as we ended up getting taken to a different company to what had booked on, but thankfully this wasn't a problem and the bus ended up being quite nice. It was a double decker bus with recliner seats.
So we had a 10 hour journey up to Bangkok and on the way, because of the heavy rain, it had flood some of the villages we were driving through. In some places it had risen so high that it crept into people's homes, devastating!
We thankfully made it to Bangkok in one piece. The bus dropped us off on koh San road, where we had to catch a taxi up to the airport.
Then once arriving at the airport we had 10-12 hour wait for our flight.
Our flight stops off in china before going to Melbourne.
When arriving in china we got there at about 22:00. Here we had to get a 24 hour visa stamped in our book. We also feel very lucky as this airport gave us a free stopover in a hotel. Yay, a bed and not a cold hard chair/floor to sleep on in the airport!
There were quite a few travellers who all got the same deal, which is amazing! We ended up meeting a girl from Finland, a couple of girls, a guy from Wales, who is living and working as a teacher in Tokyo, and a guy from America who is also going to Melbourne.
We were all so grateful to have a bed as this meant we could actually get a little bit of sleep. It was quite a good room too, double bed ( although wasn't the comfiest), a massive balcony that looked over the city, a hot shower, free tooth brush and comb, and a tv.
Our wakeup call was at 05:30, nice and early, but needed to be as our flight was at 09:05. Was so hard getting up though.
Then we got a free transfer back to the airport where we had to wait for a couple of hours for a flight to Melbourne.
Here we also met a nice woman who lives in Melbourne, and works with the council in st kilda. She left us her name and number just incase we need any help, which is very nice of her.