After walking in a torrential storm to the south bus station we got on our night bus southbound. The bus was quite comfy and we got a doughnut with potato filling, vegetable juice and some coffee flavoured peanuts what more could you ask for? We arrived Surat Thani at 5:45 and jumped on a tuk tuk with a fella from Newcastle. We then booked our bus boat and hotel with a travel agent.....then the madness began if you didnt think it had already! After a two hour bus journey to the port Gem got locked on the bus and the bus started to drive away aswell as the boat trying to leave without us. Gem dived off eventually and we legged it to the boat forgetting one small thing....We got on the boat for the three and a half hour journey to Ko Samui then to Ko Phangan when we realised we had forgot our bag. But, this wasnt any ordinary bag....it only had two ipods, camera, phone, ipod speakers, three pairs of headphones, Jimmy Kelly's swiss army knife (one of a kind), five books, two bottles of suncream and ALL of our malaria tablets....oh and Bens snickers. We both went white. Gem nearly spewed it...Ben went white. There was nothing we could do...except the obvious dive off the boat which wasnt going to work. We got off at Ko Phangan and got our Tuk-tuk to the hotel coming to terms with losing the bag and having to buy everything again which was around the 400 pound mark. We had a word with the hotel owner who was quietly confident and thought we would get it back. We thought no more about it and stayed in the Hotel resort for the rest of the night. We were going to play cards but oh yeah they were in the bag too. That night the hotel manger told us he had spoken to the travel agent who had spoken to the bus driver who admitted he still had the bag (suprisingly!!) who would take it to the port to get on the next boat to Ko Phangan!! We had abit of hope but didnt want to be sure. At 7:30 we were given the news that the bag did get on the boat but got dropped off at Ko Samui (the wrong island) two hours the wrong way and it would be spending the night in the port :-( Gem nearly cried picturing the bag with a sad face all alone on the pier in the rain. Gem didnt get much sleep that night.
Morning arrived and we didnt pester the hotel owner because we thought it was gone anyway. So at 2 o'clock exactly the time we had arrived at the hotel the tuk-tuk driver pulled into the resort. Gems face lit up. He had the bag! We still didnt quite know whether it would have anything in it due to the 150km round trip it had made in the possible 7+ thai peoples hands. But could you believe it, everything even down to the melted snickers was still in there. We could not believe it, we tipped the tuk-tuk driver 100 baht and all our belongings were back with us again. Gem drew a smiley face on the bag, hugged it then cried. In exactly that order. Everybody else thought she had gone mad but this was the norm for me. That night we celebrated in the local burger bar and got our favourite bottle of Samsung whiskey and played cards and drinking games until the small hours. G'night!!! :-D
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