Continuing on

Left Bangkok on Monday (I think, it all blurs together) on the overnight train to Trang. Apparently showing up at the station a few hours before you want to leave doesn’t generally work out in your favor here; the tourist office seems to buy up all the tickets for the next few days and then right as you’re panicking about not being able to leave, the friendly information people offer to call the tourist office where they will just happen to have the tickets waiting for you at a significant markup, which you will pay out of desperation.

We were going to stay overnight in Trang on Tuesday night but the hotel we were planning to stay in failed the mattress check, so we continued directly on to Koh Muk, lured by the promise of their Emerald Cave. Made the mistake of getting on the free pick-up truck waiting for us at the ferry pier when we told them we didn’t have a hotel yet, but luckily ended up at a cute place that ended up being in the guidebook anyway. This was also our introduction to the exciting and surprisingly complicated world of manual bucket-flush toilets and my towel got stolen by the small adorable army of stray puppies.

We were there overnight last night and made some other backpacker friends and planned to kayak to the Cave in the morning, but we missed low tide and the other people seemed to be heading out, so we left the island after a morning at the beach as David was having visions of our being stranded alone on the island in a negative sense. Now back in Trang, shoving food in our faces and trying to type this out as quickly as possible before getting on another bus and ferry (our second combo of the day) to head to Koh Lanta.