Ain't no freehouse

I left Chiang Mai last night on a bus. I know...another bus? Necessary to get to Bangkok to fly to the south. Thai island hopping, here we come!

I made it to Bangkok's international airport at 8 am for a flight a few hours later. My first domestic flight a week and two days into the trip, it's pretty much the opposite of South America. People eat interesting thngs here for breakfast. French fries, sushi, chicken and rice. I guess it could be dinnertime for any of them though, headed wherever else in the world. Or maybe that's normal breakfast fare. The coffee here is strong. Enough to have taken me years back to adding sugar to coffee.

So having landed in Surat Thani, I had to bus it to the ferry pier, then ferry it to Koh Pangang. A full 24 hours later, from Chiang Mai to final destination, I gambled and agreed to stay at a place on the island called Treehouse. It's new and hard to find, recommended by an Englishman on the ferry who was also on the bus with me. His friends are the owners and he said he'd do his best to get me a deal or something. And it's much closer to where I want to stay than the pier, so I figured easier to get where I was going. We loaded into a taxi at set off for the place. A half hour later, the taxi drops us off in the darkness at a makeshift bridge that crosses a stream. We have to hike the rest of the way, pack and all. No worries, I figure. I'm up for an adventure. Along the dirt road, we meet a bevvy of barking dogs, whose owner steers us in the right direction. In the fading light of Glyn's cell phone, I fell. Bleeding, sweating, unsure the place really existed, we came upon a creature in the woods. Nice. The chupacabra. Or maybe a bear, I thought. Yeah, a tropical bear. Turned out to be a pony.

We did finally make it to the place. I got introduced by the Englishman as the girl he just met on the ferry. Nice. And I paid more than I had hoped for any room, much less his buddy's place.

Oh, well. Whatever. So we dined with a South African couple, the German couple owners and her father. The South Africans offered food and drink as did the owners to both of us. I too pitched in with beers and orderd my own meal. As for Glyn. Nada. So. He bought nothing, paid half for the taxi up to the place in the middle of nowhere, arranged nothing and said nothing about it. Hell, he even used my guidebook to indicate to the taxi driver where we were headed.

I woke up to men sweeping the dirt around my bungalow. Weird. And someone cranking the engine of some vehicle. See, my bungalow, unlike the free one Glyn had, was next to the main house where all activities take place. I wasn't even beachfront! The place has no internet access. And to get to where I wanted to stay would cost 5 times by boat from the Treehouse than would heading back to the pier, where I was just last night, and then shooting over to my desired spot. So after two cups of coffee, both of which I paid for, I paid my bill. And I left. The female owner looked at me shocked. "But you haven't even been to the beach yet." Hmph. I wanted to ask, "How much should I fork out for that?"