Oh the places we'll go...and the things we'll do to get there!
With our bags packed we spent the day wandering, wondering if 7:00pm would ever come. Alas our taxi showed up and off to the pier we go. Go early they said. First come, first serve. Only the early birds would choose the best bed. (The term bed can used rather loosely in Thailand.) You see we decided to take the night ferry to Suratthani and then transfer to a bus for Krabi. It seemed the most direct route anyway. We show up almost 2 hours before scheduled departure time and to our delight we see no crowds. But wait...as the quiet, stern faced Thai man hands our tickets what is this? We have assigned beds! No, this can't be I say! Oh wait I don't say because I don't speak Thai well enough to disagree. So, we duck down and climb the narrow steps to our sleeping corridor...okay I need to describe the sleeping space so you get the whole picture...
You see the boat was originally a cargo ship and was later converted to a passenger night ferry. The conversion was simply the addition of one floor space thereby creating two decks, if you will, each being about 4 1/2 to 5 feet in height. Yes, that means you duck and walk! The upper deck is the passenger sleeping area while the lower deck is where you find the storage area, the crew sleeping/watching TV area and the toilet/hole in the floor (no toilet paper or even hose here, only a large bucket of water and a bowl). The upper deck is completely full wall to wall of beds, or rather thin mats, and behind each mat are two numbers painted on the walls beneath the windows. There are two rows of mats each positioned directly next to each other and then the rows are separated by approximately 1 foot of open space (for your personal belongings and oh yes the only available walking space for those late night visits to the toilet). There are life jackets (thank goodness) set at each pillow (at least there are pillows!) but there are no blankets. Lastly, about every other bed has a fan above.
Okay now you have a visual...so we quickly discover that we are in fact not the first to arrive but the second. The other couple are gringos or farangs like us--yay! We soon learn that they are from Capetown, South Africa and they got the ol' first come first serve lecture as well only to find that the crew were in fact assigning beds. The funny bit is that there were four of us on the scene at this point and guess what our assigned beds were....couple number 1 at beds 3 and 4 and we were assigned to beds 5 and 6. Yep, they put us right next to each other. Super cozy!
At some point in the night we did find ourselves drifting off to sleep despite the cozy surroundings (yes the boat was completely full). Out of nowhere came the crashing of bright lights and roaring thunder...I sat straight up in bed and witnessed the Thais on the other side of the boat scrambling in the flashing darkness to close their windows and close out the rain now flooding onto their beds. (I am not proud to admit this but I was so thankful that we were not sleeping on that side of the boat!) I quickly looked over to see if Jon was awake and he seemed to stir but his eyes were closed (later I would find out that he was faking it because "he figured if he pretended to sleep I wouldn't be able to talk to him and I would go back to sleep"). Nice Jon! At this point, my heart is pounding and there is no way I can fall back asleep with thoughts racing through my mind...which way is the exit?...how will we get to the exit if everyone panics since we are literally on top of each other in this tiny space?...I don't see our life jackets, where are they at this moment?...what if the roof starts leaking on us as alluded to in the Lonely Planet?...what if this boat is struck by lighting, I didn't see any life boats on this ferry?...what if I do fall back asleep and we go down? And so on. You get the picture.
To wrap this story up...the storm calmed and we awoke in the morning by the sounds of other passengers slowly exiting the ferry. We made it ashore! Yay!
I may think twice about taking a night ferry in the future...we shall see.
~D
No comments:
Post a Comment