The goal: get to Koh Samui and find a place to stay. Koh Samui is on the opposite coast from Krabi – ok, sure, the distance between coasts is only slightly over 100 kilometers, but it sounds impressive, going coast-to-coast. Here’s the way we accomplished this feat:
6am – leave guesthouse, Ben and Caroline by bike, Chris by motorcycle taxi, and ride to bus station
7am – board bus to Krabi with bikes stowed underneath in the baggage compartment; there were few other passengers initially but eventually the bus filled up when people boarded while we were en route
10:30am – arrive in Surat Thani and learn that the big bus to the Koh Samui pier (60+ km away) doesn’t leave until 2pm and the vans that leave every hour can’t fit the bikes – what to do?
Minutes after the 3pm ferry departs – arrive at the Koh Samui pier to learn that we just missed the 3pm ferry, so we waited for the 4pm ferry instead. We biked from Surat Thani, which was a generally flat but a hot, windy, and dusty ride. Luckily, we had an excellent advanced scout (Chris), who got one of the vans from Surat Thani, boarded an earlier ferry, located the beach area of the island, and found excellent accommodations for us.
5:45pm – Once our ferry arrived, we boarded a large tuk-tuk pickup truck which held about 10 other people. Our bikes and bags rode on the roof of the truck for the 20km to the hotel. Biking those 20km would have been a big mistake – we were tired, the road was narrow, the traffic was very heavy, it was getting dark, and the streets near our hotel seemed like a complete maze of snarled traffic, pedestrians, and one-way streets. Our driver knew right where the hotel was and dropped us off practically at the door.
7:30pm – Dinner? What else should you have for a day like this one, but gnocci! Caroline and I both had potato and pumpkin gnocci. Mine had little bits of bacon and smoky cheese - called gnocci fumé. Definitely something to try replicating at home!
9pm - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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