the longg road to phuket

well, we got on our train just fine... and it was cosy and they gave us a bedtime to turn our chairs into beds at about 9 pm.. which was fine.. sleeping wasn't so easy for me cuz i woke up at every stop.. and i felt like my bed was scraping along the right track, bouncing around and jerking around. it was kinda cool though.. i felt for a bit like i was on the hogwarts train.. except the hogwarts train im sure was much more functional... the toilet was a hole to the tracks below.. and considering ive had to use three different holes in teh ground now.. im realllly glad i brought that roll of toilet paper with me! the 10 hours on the train werent so bad as we were sleeping most of them.. well jenna slept.. i pretended.. and then we were quickly hurried off the train to the bus station where we were supposed to take a 4 hour charter bus to phuket. as ive learned not to have too high of expectations, at least our bus was later than our train, adn so we didnt have to wait for the second bus to come 2 hours later! except it was packed to the brim.. and i told him we paid for seats and he said "ok. are u getting on?" so we smashed on. i made myself a cozy seat between 4 suitcases against the toilet door... only 20 mins later to be flicked on the back of my shoulder by the bus master telling me to get up and stand next to jenna.. i guess to keep us in order? then irealize he just wanted to jack my seat. how rude! the ppl here are definitely not as nice as in bali.. but they are just as out to get your money.. if not more! the thai royal police came on board and inspected all the asians identites at two stops and didnt bother with us.. dont know hwat that was about... after what seemed like an eternity on our more than 4 hour bus that's airconditioning prolly only worked for the driver, the bus master stood up and said if you are going to any beach, get off here.. there werent too many white ppl left on the bus and so we assumed that meant us too.. so we got off and shoved in another van. after 2 mins the van pulls into a tourist info store and tells us all to get out.. everyone was mad cuz they all just wanted to get to the beach and we were all tired of being haggled and taken to the wrong places by the thai ppl trying to get more money out of us.. then the new van man told us we couldnt get back on unless we had a sticker or paid 150 baht. the other people got the stickers just before we got crammed on the bus saying where they were going so they could heard us better... and so we didnt have them, and neither did our new friend john from spain. john was verrrry angry they were trying to squeeze more money out of him and he started yelling.. somehow i got them to agree to take us to the town center for free, since that is what we paid for in our all-inclusive tickets.. and we would get our own ride to the beach. the van man was livid and drove us down the road about 2 more k's and threw us out. so we walked. and jenna and i are pretty good at getting bothered by the "transport?" drivers so we had faith something would show up.. so jenna, john and i walked for a bit.. and a few motorbikes offered to take us.. they assured us we would fit with our bags but we said no.. so eventually one guy drove his bike home and got his "taxi car," aka for sure the family car. we hung out in the shade of some bedding store laying on nice comfy matresses in the shade wondering why none of the hostels we stayed at had anything romotely close to the matresses.. our guy showed up and took us to patong beach where john wanted to go.. and i said we should just go to and jump in the water and check it out since our beach was a bit further south from where we were. we jammed out to american 90's pop music.. like bon jovi, nsync, and ricky martin.. but of course none of hte songs were actually by the correct artists. whatever! and we got to patong and the teal-blue water that we traveled so far to see wass.... brown. we said bye to john who went to find a room and we went for a swim anyway..then we decided to be brave and get in a tuk-tuk for the first time beacuse we were assured that they were better in phuket.. we gave the guy our address and he promised he knew where it was.. as we were driving i noticed he kept looking at it.. and realized he had no clue where we were going.. we drove in circles, and stopped and asked 15 different ppl if they knew.. and no one did.. one person sent us to a fried rice restaurant because our hostel is named southern fried rice.. o geez. it was probably an hour.. and we started to konw the streets better than him! but we found it! and its very nice and clean.. some dude from norway runs it and its overly talkative.. but nice..and we have free internet again so yay! i walked down to kata beach where the water was just the right colors and maybe even too warm...and the sand white and super duper soft :) yay! we made it.. and the experience was one for the books. i think we'll pay the extra 20 bucks to fly back when we leave for egypt in a week and a bit!