Bus to Phuket

One of the most stressful parts of this trip was all the extra planning which had to occur because I decided to terminate the flight to Asia in Hong Kong rather than my final destination of Phuket.  Simply put it meant that once we deplaned in Hong Kong we were on our own to get to the point where the departing plane back to the US would be.  I previously described the plane trip from Hong Kong to Bangkok here and the private drive to Hua Hin here but we still had an 8 hour ride to get from Hua Hin to Phuket.  Our options included driving back to Bangkok and taking a plane, hiring a private driver, driving ourselves or taking a bus.  We opted to review the last two: driving or public bus.
 To drive, one of us had to have an international drivers license, so I signed up.  All that is required is a standardized form where critical information like you name, address, country of origin are located so anyone from any country can acquire the basics without a huge language hassle.  I picked mine up at the local AAA office for $27. The license is good for 1 yr.

I read plenty of information on the internet about the drive from Hua Hin to Phuket and each option we picked had several pros and cons.  Ultimately, I decided not to make a decision until I arrived in Thailand. Well, with two days left before we departed for Phuket it was decision time.  I knew that buses traveled frequently between the areas and under no circumstances was I to take a night bus.  So this meant an entire vacation day would be used for transportation but I had already built it in to the schedule.  I chose not to fly because I wanted to really see the countryside and the way to do this is drive.  Although having done it, the countryside is basically just jungle.  Driving presented its own challenges but allowed the freedom to stop where a bus would not.  Two women driving through the jungle even in daylight, well that didn't sound smart and even if we did there was concern about the lack of road rules.  Sure there are stop lights and road signs but I couldn't read anything.   And lets not forget that in Thailand they drive on the opposite side of the road from Americans.  I had a hard time looking in the right direction on foot when I was in London just to cross the road so there was no way I was going to operate a car in Thailand if I did not need too.  The bus option won out.  Now came the added stress of which bus, there are hundreds, yes hundreds, I am not exaggerating and they all offer several service levels: 1st class, premium, standard etc., and the classes all mean different things at different companies. I actually saw some of these premium buses: yuck!  The other thing you had to be careful of was the photos of buses you were shown when buying your tickets may not be the bus that shows up.  It was such a scam, fortunately, I read the Phuket News  (a great read) while planning the trip and learned about a relatively new bus service called Yellow Bus which made the daily trip to Phuket during the day, on new buses, for very cheap, something like $21US per person.  I was pretty secure with my decision until they day before when we had to purchase the ticket in person since we weren't able to secure tickets online.

The concierge at the Hyatt tried without success to reach someone at the local bus terminal in Hua Hin for me to purchase the tickets, that meant Diva and I had to physically go to the bus terminal.  The hotel had a driver take us in a private car. When we arrived at the terminal the counter folks tried to get us to buy much more expensive tickets on other carriers and I was having no part of it.  I wanted Yellow Bus.  This is where the language barrier entered the scene and thank goodness we had the Hyatt driver who understood some of what I was trying to say.  We were at the bus terminal but Yellow Bus wasn't serviced there and the ticket ladies weren't going to tell the driver where Yellow Bus did go because they would lose a sale.  Fortunately, he walked to the end of the road where a group of taxi drivers were waiting and had a 5 minute conversation while Diva and I looked helpless.  The driver then came back and pointed to this building across the street and drove us.

Oh this looks promising....

Our driver had to knock on the sliding glass door to see if he could find anyone for us to purchase the tickets, it wasn't looking promising then when we looked in the glass door we could see bare feet behind the desk area... OK, again not good, there was a guy either dead or asleep.  Turned out he was asleep under the desk, mind you the entire office was like 5'x9'. He comes out and they talk, all the while he is adjusting his pants, shirt , etc.,  the Hyatt driver tells us to pay and we were handed a piece of paper and told what time to come back tomorrow morning, that's it.  Boy, do I feel secure now.  Next morning driver takes us back 30 minutes before departure and we are the only ones there, he cant find the guy from yesterday or anyone for that matter, we tell him its OK, and send him on his way adding we might see him later.  Then people start to show up. The bus is suppose to leave at 9:00 but this is Thailand, the bus arrives after 9:15am and my heart skips a beat because...it's a beautiful bus inside and out, Diva and I are so excited.  New seats, a/c, on board toilet, they even have a bus attendant who gives us snacks, new blankets, bottled water plus we even received a hot lunch, OMG, we hit the bus riding jackpot compared to what we will later see on the road.

What a site for nervous travelers...a lovely bus

It should be noted that no longer is this Yellow Bus, it's now known as Green Bus (why bother to even care, as long as we arrive in one piece).  I think it's barely 2 hours into the bus trip when its time to start drinking (I brought the wine Hyatt gave us when we first arrived, we never had a chance to drink it there since all our alcohol was free).  Wasn't sure if it was allowed on the bus so I get the brilliant idea to wrap a newspaper around the bottle.  Yes, we drank a bottle of South African red like street walkers, probably the best wine I had in a while along with some bread and cheese we took from the breakfast buffet at the Hyatt.  Hey, we chicks know how to travel in style.

After 4 hours it was time to stop at the Thai equivalent of a US rest stop.  First stop ladies room, Whoa, what the hell is this?  It took about 5 minutes for me to decide if I would use this facility or not.  And while this picture shows the green pot on the ledge in many rest rooms it was in the pool of water.  Oh this bathroom break would use at least a gallon of Clorox wipes and antiseptic for my hands.  I swear I need to write a post just on the strange toilet facilities we encountered on this trip.

Now it was time to eat, so we had to sit at a community table with other people from our bus.  Diva was still messing with the rest room facilities when I made my way to the table.  All this fresh food was laid out and the only thing I recognized was rice.  The lovely lady scooping rice in the photo spoke very good English and helped us out by describing the dishes and how to eat the food.  I still stuck with rice and fruit.

All in all I'm glad we took the bus, it was clean, and all the unexpected perks were a pleasant surprise, the people were nice and it wasn't crowded.  Yes, 8 hours is long and the countryside got bland but we had books and newspapers and wine so it was the perfect way to get to Phuket.  Finally, around 5:45pm we arrived at Phuket's bus terminal and took a taxi to our hotel.   I felt relieved to finally be at our final destination.