It was no surprise that we got woken up at 4.45am at a stop in the middle of nowhere which turned out to be Surat Thani; we were super early, this guy turned the lights on and started shouting for everyone to get off, of course everyone was tired and half asleep so we had no clue what was going on; all of our bags were out on the grass in a pile. We was just shouting go sit over in the bus stop, wait there! I honestly think that if he's shouted at one more person he would have had a slap! I'm pretty sure he knew it as well because he just disappeared into a room and shut the door. All that was at this stop was a toilet and woman charging you 5 baht to pee in it. There was no communication to let us no what was happening or where we were going, how long the bus would be. Nothing!
So we all sat there until 8am, by this time the sun was obviously up and was slowly making us all melt. Then the little tour agencies opened and they were calling people in in their groups and selling them the minivan that would take you to your hotel after you got off the bus or boat.
We got called in, still absolutely shattered from hardly any sleep and taking two motion sickness tablets. (That tired we could barely keep two of our eyes open at the same time, we were exhausted) she sold us a minibus to Patong from Phuket town at 800 baht! Absolutely ridiculous price!! What the hell were we doing, we weren't at all in the right frame of mind to be paying this ridiculous price for a cab to Patong! But we done it anyways.
The buses arrived to take the guys to the islands, then there were just me and Scott and another couple left. This guy finally called us at 8.30am and said pick your bags up, tuk tuk. What the hell was going on!? We were being taken to the bus station... So the four of us got in, we arrived about 20 minutes later and he was asking for 80 baht each because he had brought us to the station as if it was some sort of favour! So we all refused. This was a public bus station, we hadn't paid for a public bus ride!
We relentlessly took us over to a tatty looking bus and we hushed on at the back, we put our bags down and Scott noticed that the guy paid for our ticket on the bus to Phuket, oh how generous of him.

So now off we go finally at 9am, we don't even leave Surat Thani until 10am because it's a public bus and they keep stopping to pick people up and then the street vendors bring there food on the bus to try and sell their food to you. No it just stinks the bus out GET OFF!!!
The bus turned out to be more comfortable than the bus we had travelled on overnight. We had a super recliner, extra leg room because we were by the door and there was air con... For an hour into the journey and then it stopped working. So we were eventually dripping with sweat because of the heat in the bus.
The couple that were with us were going to a national park just a over Phuket but it meant that we had to take the long way around to get there drop them off.
We didn't arrive on the island of Phuket until 3pm. (That's six hours on a boiling hot bus and just to bear in mind we were supposed to arrived in Phuket at 8am this morning according to the people running the company in Bangkok)
By now we had come to the conclusion that it was all a scam and the money we had paid for a minibus to our hotel wasn't going to happen, we just sat there angry and sulking because we thought we had been scammed. Scott was moaning all night on and off, I just put my head phones in because it was winding me up even more and there was nothing we could do about any of it.

Just as we had finished our moaning conversation about it being a scam and I mentioned that I was going to search the bus station high and low to find the company that we apparently had booked with and flashed the little piece of paper around until I found them, I wasn't going to give up easy! The suicidal driver (they all drive like loonatics, at a few points in the trip I didn't think he had control over the bus and half the time he was having a cigarette whilst driving at stupid speed and driving in the hard shoulder) pulled over and shouted Patong, so we got off with a Chinese couple and a thai and her German husband and their son. There was a minibus!! It wasn't a scam afterall but we did get exceptionally ripped off because it was only supposed to have cost us 200baht as we found out when the others got on the minibus and paid up. We were gutted, we had been done over!
So 3pm we finally got on the last bus of the day, 7 hours after the time we were supposed to arrive, we told the driver our hotels, he nodded drove down the road that was full with road blocks, turned back around on himself and after 20minutes in the the minibus he pulled up at a tourist company and a lady asked us all to get out and go inside, so the thai lady started arguing with them I think. Just saying that we wanted to go to the hotels and we knew were we wanted to all go, so we were all shouting no we know where to go. Basically what we were telling them in the minivan they wanted us to tell them in the tourist office because they would try and scam us in booking a hotel with them. ARGH I hate Thailand right now, not a lover of it at all right about now!

The sun streaming in, we got back on the road and over he mountain to Patong. We never thought that we see this moment today - arriving in Patong!
So the Chinese couple demanded they get dropped off at central Patong when we were having our conflict with the tour company woman, so we stopped on the main strip, it took us 15 minutes for them to try and find their hotel in the end they were chucked out on the side of the road and had to get a taxi, it was right though they hadn't co-operated when they were asked where they wanted to get dropped off!
I nearly cried when we seen our hotel, we arrived at 4.15pm and I had a lump in my throat! It was pretty emotional arriving at the hotel, we had completed the gruelling 22 hour bus journey with reckless drivers and a hot stuffy public bus, hardly any sleep, awfully uncomfortable chairs, scams and annoying thai people shouting at us at 5am in the morning!

The receptionist brought us a cold glass of water, it didn't touch the sides! It was gulped down in one mouthful I think, we were so thirsty! We had only drunk one big bottle of water between us since last night so we were pretty parched!
The room was lovely, the shower was so powerful! I think if the shower just dribbled out I may have just sat there and cried all night. We had freezing cold air con as well and the pillows are A..mazing!

I don't know where we got our energy from but we went for food and walked around the whole of Patong's two main streets. We went down to the beach and watched sunset and found the walking street with all the main bars on, lady boys and ping pong shows. It was pretty nice here, there are a lot of nixes bars and restaurants, a mixture of expensive and cheaper ones. The beach was real nice, the sea was calm and sparkling blue, the sand is white, we were quite surprised considering he horrible stories we have heard of Patong but it's nice, there's a nice atmosphere, yes it's a holiday destination but it isn't seedy like Pattaya, we like what we see so far! We even forced a beer down us to sit there and force ourselves to stay out until 7pm, that didn't last though we were soon walking back to the hotel whilst everyone else were on their way out, we were both fast asleep by 8.30pm!

What an absolute night mate of a 24hours!!