Bangkok, Thailand

Thailand was a whirlwind.

Travelling to Bangkok was relatively painless and we were so happy to step into a tropical airport after taking 2 buses and 2 airplanes. Our backpacks were temporarily lost but the airport security drove them straight to our hostel where we sat drinking Chang beers until 4 am until they arrived the first night. The very first thing we noticed about Thailand is the price difference. Our 20 minute cab ride was the equivalent of $4 and our beers were about $1. Once our other friends slowly trickled in we got some day passes on the Chao Praya River. We hopped on and off the boat to check out markets and get lunch. 

 We stopped to see the Reclining Buddha and some phenomenal temples.

We then found out that there had been a grenade thrown into the protests that were happening in Bangkok and decided that it would be a good time to head down to the islands to meet up with our last friend, Tristan. We waited for about an hour at our hostel for our taxi to the bus station and learned that ourtaxi had gotten in a car accident so another one was ordered. They brought us to a building and told us to wait on the sidewalk. After about another hour of waiting some buses turned up and with a lot of hand gestures we found the right one. Our poor friend Jenn had to use the bathroom desperately but was horrified to find that once the bus started moving the bathroom on the bus was an unlit cubby that someone had vomited all over and we had about 4 hours until the rest stop. She cried a little, put on her eye mask and her neck pillow and braved the next 4 hours like a champ. At about 2am we arrived... somewhere and waited in a little green room for 2 hours until a truck came to pick us up. We then drove to a pier where we sat for another 3 hours waiting for the sun to rise and take the ferry to Koh Tao. Finally, when we boarded the tiny little ferry we all sat on the deck and tried to keep up hopes that in only a 2 and a half hours we would have finally made it to a beautiful beach. The water was very tumultuous though and we were holding on pretty tight to the bars that we didn't even noticed when the ferry had turned around 40 minutes into the ride because of the fear of it capsizing. We got back to that pier and a boat load of unhappy people were yelling at poor Mr. Wat, the man who is in charge of the ferry. We tried to comfort him as he made arrangements for the people to stay overnight in a hotel or be brought to another pier where they were sending boats to Koh Tao. The truck that had come to pick up the people to go to the other pier had filled up so the 5 of us were put in the truck bed of a police officers jeep.
We got to the pier, had some drinks and lunch and waited for our next ferry. That ferry was... terrifying. We held on for dear life for 2 and a half hours while half of the passengers including some staff we vomiting into barf bags from sea sickness. Even Jamie's sunglasses flew off her face and into the ocean. We survived of course and got to our destination after some tears and jumping on to the land and practically kissed it for being alive. We estimated that the swells were about 8m high and were sure we were going to capsize into the Andaman Sea. We didn't and although we were salty from the giant waves crashing into us and the tears we were so happy to be in Koh Tao.