Surat Thani
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
24
47
Trip End
Apr 30, 2009
Surat Thani,
Thailand
Friday, January 9, 2009
The travel agency desperately tried to get us to book our tickets to Koh Phangan through them, but at a price at 450 baht/each, which we figured was too much. After explaining to the woman that we were not leaving for the island until tomorrow and that we really just wanted to find a hotel room for now, she told us she had a place for 280/baht a night. Since that sounded like a good price, we decided to follow her for a few blocks into a really impressive looking lobby. It was called Thai Rungraun Hotel and it had a lobby that looked way too nice to have such cheap rooms. However after speaking with a girl at reception we found out that their cheapest single rooms where indeed 280 baht a night. So far Lisa and I have always booked double rooms but they insisted that a single room had a bed that was sufficiently large for a married couple like us.
I decided to go up and take a look at the room and the bed was the size of a standard double bed in Canada. It was also quite soft and comfortable and the room was large, clean and had a Western-style toilet and available electrical outlets. This was everything we needed so I booked the room for the night and went to the lobby to pay for it. While we were down there we enquired into the cost of tickets to Koh Phangan and found out they were charging 420 baht. Thinking we could still find a better price, we just went to our room to freshen up with a shower.
The Lonely Planet guide did not leave us very excited about Surat Thani, but we found it a decent place to spend a night or two. The first thing we did was venture down to the waterfront to see if we could figure out how to book a ferry ticket without the aid of a travel agency. We easily spotted the night ferry, but we could not find any kind of ticket office for any other boat. We had read that the night ferry leaves at 23:00 and takes about 7 hours to make the journey to Koh Phagnan, which meant arriving at 6:00; too early for us. However it is also the cheapest way to go especially when you consider the savings of a hotel for a night. Anyhow despite asking around, we were unable to figure out how to get on any other boat from the Surat Thani peer so we next headed to a travel agency that Lonely Planet recommended called the Phantip Travel which was near the auxiliary bus station.
On our way there we stopped at a place called ____ because they had good deals on pizza and we were hungry for lunch. Lisa and I split a large vegetarian pizza that had toppings including corn, peas and about a half dozen other vegetables that would be on a Canadian vegetarian pizza. The sauce was sweet and reasonable pizza sauce but the crust tasted like it was frozen and from a grocery store. Overall I can recommend this place for pizza because they really piled on the vegetables and it was 120 baht for a large pizza that satisfied Lisa and I for lunch. The Pizza Company still makes the best pizza that I have had in Asia.
We made it there just before 17:00 and they were already mostly closed for the day. However we walked in and spoke to a man that showed us a sign stating their tickets to Koh Phangan were 350 baht. He also said that the office opened up at 8:00 and that there was a bus leaving for Donsak at 8:15. Donsak is a port about a one hour bus ride from Surat Thani and is where most of the boats leave for Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, or Koh Tao. Although we later found an offer for 320 baht for the same ride, Lonely Planet had warned its readers about many tour operators of Surat Thani being scam artists, so we thought it would be smart to pay a little extra and go with a recommended agency.
After working out the next day's plans, I ran back to the hotel room to grab my camera. During our walk down the pier I had regretted not bringing my camera along and now I had less than an hour of daylight to take pictures of our only day that we planned to stay in Surat Thani. Along the way to the pier I noticed that there were lots of street vendors setting up for a night market, not just on the main night market street but others as well. I also saw plenty of temples that were well kept and very colorful and shot a few pictures of them on my way to the water.
The people in Surat Thani seemed very friendly, even for Thai standards. Nearly anybody that saw my camera pointed in their direction smiled and posed for pictures. By the time I hit the pier, people were waiting in small boats which served as taxis to take them home after work. Right away some of the young girls struck up a conversation with me to find out where I was from and why I was taking pictures. The pier offered many opportunities for photographs of people's everyday lives in Surat Thani. The pier was alive with activities ranging from families out for a walk, to senior citizens having exercise classes and of course boat load after boat load of commuters coming to and from the pier.
I wish I had more time before it was dark outside but I still grabbed some pictures I really liked including some of children balancing on the bow of the narrow little transport boats.. As soon as they saw me they began to laugh and smile and I took pictures of them with the pier at sunset as a backdrop. As they got off the boat they ran up to me, but didn't speak a word of English. I showed them and their parents the pictures though and they seemed fascinated by them. I wish I had a portable printer with me so that they could keep a copy.
After an hour it was too dark to take any more pictures, but now the Surat Thani night market was in full swing. Surat Thani's night market is definitely geared toward the local Thai population more than Westerners, so there was essentially no English to be found. This made it slightly harder to order food than normal, but we still managed to find some chicken pad thai for dinner at a stall on the night market street. It was served with a vast plate of vegetables, none of which I recognized except for cucumbers. We paid 40 baht each for a plate of pad thai and received a rather small serving by Thai standards. It was delicious as always though and was certainly a good deal by Canadian standards.
The night market has a lot of food stalls offering small snacks and desserts and I ended up trying a few of them. We found some large strawberry shakes for 20 baht and also some flavored waffles for 13 baht. I tried the chocolate ones and the maple variety, but they were served cold unlike at the bus station in Bangkok where I got them heated up. I also found a banana and egg roti for 20 baht at this market, which was about as good of a deal for a dessert that I have found in Thailand. I love Thai style roti, which is very different from the roti bread we ate in Malaysia.
On my way out of the market I noticed a vendor selling a variety of nice looking shorts at 159 baht each. In Canada my waist is a size 34 and size 36 will not stay on my waist without a belt, but in Thailand I have had mixed results with size 34 pants. For instance in Chiang Mai I bought a pair of size 34 Unionbay branded shorts from a vendor and they fit just perfect. I bought a different but similar styled, size 34 Unionbay shorts from the same vendor and they were much too tight for me to wear. Although it was not a problem to exchange these shorts for a larger pair the following day, I learned to somewhat ignore sizing labels from street vendors after that. The shorts for 159 baht that were size 34 were obviously way too small for me. I held up a pair of 36s and they looked rather small too. I compared the size 36 to the size 38 and found out that the waist was almost exactly the same size but the shorts were baggier. I ended up buying a pair of 38s and they fit me about the same as the 34s normally do so I am happy that I ignored the size 38 label.
We had a comfortable sleep at our hotel in Surat Thani. Although the Thai Rungraun Hotel is situated downtown in the middle of everything, it was still reasonably quiet (at least in our room on the fourth floor.) The only thing I remember hearing was the occasional car with a stereo system so loud that planes flying by could likely hear it as well. The fan cooled room was also amply cool this time of year and spending money on air conditioning would've been a waste. Although I didn't shop around for other room at all, I can recommend staying at the Thai Rangraun Hotel if you are looking for a budget room in Surat Thani.
The next day we woke up and decided to eat breakfast before heading to Phantip Travel agency. Before 8:00 much of the town was still closed and there aren't exactly a lot of restaurants catering to tourists in the first place. We ended up getting a small breakfast of coffee, eggs and toast for 60 baht/each at a travel agency around the corner from our hotel. Not one of the better breakfast deals that we have found in Thailand but at least we had food in our stomachs as we headed to the travel agency.
We were at the travel agency at 8:00 and promptly bought our tickets to Koh Phangan for 350 baht each. Although the bus was supposed to pick us up at 8:15, it didn't come until 8:30 and then waited about 10 minutes before leaving again. By the time we were at Donsak, an hour or so later, we had to rush off the bus and run to the ferry. It was seconds away from leaving before the bus arrived, but fortunately it waited until everybody from the bus had boarded it.
The ferry was a large boat and much more comfortable than the little raft which we had taken to Koh Samui three years earlier. When we had gone to Koh Samui we had booked a very cheap deal from Big John's in Bangkok and essentially we got what we had paid for. We had long waits at restaurants between different legs of the trips and the boat ride from Donsak to Koh Samui was downright dangerous. We were all herded on to a small wooden raft to the point where there was not room for everybody to sit on the floor. We rode without any shade on a hot and sunny day for about 3 or 4 hours before we finally made it to Samui.
This time on our ride to Koh Phangan there were plenty of indoor and outdoor seats to choose from and nobody had to sit in the sun that didn't want to. Lisa and I chose outdoor seats in a shady spot on the back of the boat, put up our feet, slipped on our headphones and enjoyed the 2.5 hour boat ride. The sea was reasonably calm and the boat didn't rock about very much at all. This was good news for Lisa and I who have both had bad experiences with rocky boats and sea sickness. It was so calm that we didn't even bother taking our motion sickness pills and still enjoyed the relaxing ride.
