Bangkok To Phuket By Train!

We wanna go to the beach!! Kai's first cross country adventure and our second day on the trains! It's another 12 hour overnight sleeper and when you wake up it's a beautiful mix of stunning limestone cliffs and small country paddy fields, all surrounded in the lush super green Thai jungle.

We arrived into Surat Thani at 6am ish and the touts and buses were ready and waiting to go. We always laugh at the sideways looks I get, he looks Thai, wait he don't speak Thai fluently, oh he says he is Thai? So whenever I hear the "farang" prices I give it my best effort at "arai whaa?" which is kinda like Thai slang for WTF? (But less offensive). That usually gets them a giggle and then we get into the whole story of where was I born, why I don't speak Thai very well and all the rest. By the end of those conversations the Thais usually calm down and we figure out the real price.

The bus journey from Surat Thani to Phuket town was 4-5hrs and 500B for the three of us on a large A-class size bus with AC, some funny Thai music and a toilet on board. We picked this over the initial 3000B offer we heard to cram in a silver minivan, which in my experience is always driven too fast and too furious style. Sure perhaps you knock an hour off the trip, however the gentle rocking helped Kai sleep most of the way and Jamie made use of the on-board lav so I feel we got our moneys worth. They dropped us at Phuket town bus station and we got a final minivan for 50B per person as I had wrangled a couple other passengers off the bus who were going to Patong beach. All in all not the easiest part of the journey for Mom and Kai, however the sea and sand in their feet made it all worthwhile.

Total cost for our travel for both train tickets, plus the coach and the mini bus was 2528B which is $72 all in. That worked out cheaper than a single airfare down here, so even if we go back the same way we'll have saved half off traveling by air. Seeing the stunning scenery, experiencing Thailand and meeting many friendly people is of course free and overall we were surprised how entertained Kai was by the whole traveling thing. He's definitely our baby, a gypsy vagabond at heart.

Thanks for enjoying the ride with us and we hope that we may have inspired fellow nomads to go by land, save some pennies and enjoy as fullest experience of Thailand as you can. When we visit a country, we feel we only get to taste it through real people and local interactions. I feel very happy to share is that many Thai people you meet have huge hearts of gold and are always willing to exchange a friendly hello and offer any help they can.

See you in the next vlog, thanks again for watching and sharing our adventures!

Wholeness.

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