Houston, we have a problem

01/14/2024

6:30 a.m. - what a terrible alarm clock sound. Get out of bed 🐓. Tired, we packed up the rest of our things, brushed our teeth and headed to the nearest supermarket to buy breakfast for our onward journey. The cool morning air was incredibly pleasant. Nevertheless, getting up so early every day is probably out of the question for us. We stood on the street and waited for our pickup service, which was supposed to arrive at 7:20. 30 minutes later we were starting to get restless because the speedboat we had booked was supposed to leave at 8am. When Nina was already dialing the number from our booking slip, our service drove up. Yuhu! We got in and filled up our water bottles with purchased bottled water. That was quite difficult during the bumpy ride…. Ronja's neighbor also felt this, as he got a little wet during the accident. Yikes. Unfortunately we couldn't stop laughing because we were laughing so much.

When we arrived at the harbor, we got on our boat and took off with a 20 minute delay. We drove and drove, already thinking about where we wanted to go later. Until our attention was directed elsewhere. Suddenly there was a loud noise and the boat's engine stopped. The crew's incomprehensible conversations didn't really make the situation any better. Houston, we have a problem. But a little later we continued driving, at a reduced speed. We really thought we had caught a big animal or something, it remains unidentified. As we continued our journey, we decided to travel to Koh Tao. Only offers were made on the internet that were either not accessible to us or were far too inconvenient to spend the night at the port. At some point Nina remembered that about a week ago we had received the number of a very lovely woman (Suahee) from a “travel agency”. We already booked a tour and the ferry to Koh Phi Phi through them. She said we could always get in touch. We accepted that and asked if she could find us a connection to Koh Tao. Yes! The bus to the next ferry left Krabi at 11:30am. Our ferry was scheduled to arrive at 11am - perfect! Since she said the bus company wouldn't accept our money if we just got there, she offered to pick us up at the port and drive us straight there in her private car (after she'd showered). Okay, everything sounds cool.

As you can imagine, our boat was late. We were getting really nervous. We docked at 11:33am. Shit! Packed with our heavy backpacks, the first thing we did was jump off the board and run... we ran across the long jetty, past hundreds of people who were staring at us. And then Ronja also lost one of her slippers, for which she was laughed at. Classic. When we arrived at Suahee's house, we hoisted ourselves into the back seat of her car. Completely out of breath and sweaty. She drove us very quickly through Krabi in her sports car. Red light?! Oops.. With a mix of nervousness, joy, breathlessness and gratitude, we had actually almost written off our Koh Tao trip. But hope dies last. At the last minute we reached the bus, we quickly got off and Suahee, like a young deer, ran to the counter to buy us the tickets. Meanwhile our backpacks were loaded. We hugged her tightly goodbye and gave her some money, which she didn't want to accept for the time being. It worked, we made it onto the bus.

Ronja wasn't completely relieved when her bladder responded. She really held out for a long time before she tried to go to the bus toilet out of necessity. But there wasn't any. Houston! ... Then our pelvic floor training from our training finally paid off because there was no other option. When we reached the next port, Ronja ran straight to the toilet, but surprisingly her path was crossed at the wrong time by one of the soldiers. They wanted to go to Koh Tao, just like us. Relieved, Ronja went to the toilet after an extremely short conversation and then went to find Nina, who had all the backpacks. We got on the ferry and stupidly chose seats on the deck. The sun was shining here. It was quite pleasant at first with the wind in the air, but at some point we switched downwards. We drove for about 3 hours and actually arrived on Koh Tao in the rain. It was the first time we had experienced rain on our trip. We took a taxi to the accommodation, in which an Israeli young man decided to get off at our hotel and simply ask if they still had a room, as he had arrived without accommodation. He is super nice and not at all pushy, which we found very pleasant.

After a shower we urgently needed food. And a cocktail. We had stomach aches because of how hungry we were and had a hard time eating anything. The cocktail worked immediately. We had more cocktails in a few more bars, visited the beach and eventually went to bed.

Our blog is becoming less professional as we can't manage to write on such evenings but we'll get better!

See you later

Ronja & Nina