Boat Hopping Adventure

Julissa and I had done a fairly good job at communicating throughout our trip, but for me, the day after our rock climbing adventure was the day we were finally in sync. We got up fairly early that morning, but it turned out that it wasn't early enough. Koh Jum was the next island on our itinerary, but by the time we went to book our boat ride, we learned that we had missed the boat by an hour. The travel agent we were talking to was very unhelpful, and even rude. And the travel tours she was offering were extremely expensive. Julissa and I walked away thinking since we missed all the boats leaving Railay, then we should at least get breakfast and then decide what to do. On our way to getting our banana shakes, we ran into Chris O'Donnell. Not the famous Chris O'Donnell, but the Australian we had met at a bar two nights before. He was one of our dancing partners that night and also happened to be climbing at the same rock the day before. I think Chris was our lucky charm, because he was talking to another travel agent, who not only gave us a discount on our boat tickets, but also set us straight on the different boat schedules on Railay. We had fifteen minutes to get to the bay where the boat was waiting and we ran with our bags like there was no tomorrow. We ended up buying a boat ride to Koh Lanta and skipped on Koh Jum because Lanta was cheaper, closer and easier to get to.

On our way to the boat, Julissa made a detour to find an ATM. When I arrived at the boats I began to ask for the Lanta longtail. Almost simultaneously, about ten people said, "Oh, Lanta left. No more boats to Lanta." A bit shocked, I asked "What do you mean Lanta left. How could it have left. We have tickets and we were told it left at 10:45 not at 10:40!" The woman in charge of loading passengers on the longtail boats was furious and yelling at me as if it was my fault that we bought our tickets at 10:30am and were told the boat left at 10:45am. Well, obviously, we DID just by the tickets. The poor travel agent by Chris O'Donnell probably didn't inform them we were coming so they took off early. The ten or so tourists that informed the longtail to Lanta had just left were getting on to a boat headed for Phuket. The lady proceeded to shove me on to the Phuket longtail with an even angrier boat captain on board. Julissa was no where in sight, and all the Phuket tourists were on board, not so patiently waiting for Julie and me. I was almost laughing inside, but mostly freaking out because there was no Julie, the ticket lady is yelling at me, and the boat captain's eyes were searing into me. Seconds later, I see Julissa strolling down the beach. I cupped my hands to my mouth and yelled as loud as I could, "Julissa, hurry up, the boat is leaving!" I wanted to yell much more because I feeling pretty tense inside, but what I shouted out loud was enough because Julissa's long half-marathon legs sprang into action and she sprinted to the boat faster and funnier than I could have imagined. I told her to throw me her bag, which she did mid sprint. I threw her stuff and mine into the boat, told her to take off her shoes, and pulled her on to the longtail so fast and hard she nearly jumped over me. I had no idea where we were going, but we were on a boat and that was good enough. All of this happened in span of four minutes, but it felt so very long.

Again, we didn't know where we were headed, but about ten minutes later, we joined up with another longtail. It turned out that the ticket lady had arranged for us to jump from the Phuket longtail to the Lanta longtail. Pretty clever for the angry ticket lady, but I am sure this wasn't the first time some crazy chicas showed up late for their boat ride. At this point, we still weren't sure of what was going on, but all we knew is that we were on a boat going somewhere, and that was good enough. I began to film our departure from Railay and as I did so, it seemed like we were about to crash into a huge ferry boat. One of the ferry boat guys jumped on to our longtail and began to remove our bags. Julissa's was on top and she freaked out, began to yell, "Don't take my bag!" What we didn't realize was that we were shifting from the longtail to the ferry. This was not clear to us until every one of the longtail passengers had joined the ferry and we were left alone with our bags on the boat. It was quite funny. We joined the ferry and found a nice cozy spot on the ledge of the boat. The four hour ferry ride was very relaxing and we topped it off with yummy spicy ramen noodle soup from a cup. We still hadn't had breakfast at this point and we were very hungry. Julissa and I were elated when we found out there was food in the passenger cabin below. Spicy ramen, Baked Lays and Oreos made for the perfect brunch in the middle of the ocean on our boat hopping adventure.

As I re-read this entry, I can't help but laugh out loud and smile at the mess we got ourselves into. We had a blast traveling from Railay to Lanta. Today, as I sit cozily indoors, avoiding the snow blizzard outside, I ache to sit on the ferry with my feet dangling from ledge, feeling the salt water spray my legs, face and hair. Thank you Railay. Thank you Lanta. Thank you angry ticket lady. And of course, the company made the entire experience memorable...