Lazy day, Minivan ride

Food beach and swimming and that was it, Tania had had some bad news so we did not meet up for dinner, when I went to the beach I had to walk back through the local monkey troupe about 20 of them had come down to the beach to say hi to all the tourists and have their photos taken. Most had recently had their hair done just for the occasion, it must have been their one day out a week. The kids were running around and fighting in the trees while the mums smiled and picked fleas off each other. And that was about my day.

Next day

I think you can get lazy when backpacking, I was going to take the local bus from Ao Nang to Phuket but in the end could not be motivated to do it so instead booked myself in for a Minivan ride. Yep what a mistake. I was picked up at the guest house and loaded up onto a bus and driven to Krabi to wait for another bus to take me to Phuket, the first bus was alright a bit run down but still not so bad, had to wait around for the minivan and then we loaded up and headed off.
Now I don’t mind fast drivers, but you have to be safe with it, with in the first half an hour we had had 3 close calls, the driver was a dick, plain and simple, a right idiot. Great we have him for the next two hours. The minivan had had a new muffler put on it, now I learnt years ago that this can have benefits and down sides, you get a little more power but as in the case of our van you get a really bad drone at certain revs, luckily this drone was cancelled out by the incredibly bad diff whine that once up to speed so some new kind of torture, then to top this all off the driver who is nuts had to talk, well talk is the wrong word yell down his phone just be heard over all the other noise radiating from the Van. God I wished more than anything to be back on my bike, it would have taken two to three days to ride but it would have been much more preferable then this. Where are you bike.
We stopped for toilet and food break on the way through and our driver decided he would start removing the bags in the door way while I was trying to get out, he managed to get the bag out while scrapping it across my shin thank you very much, O and I was half way out when he started to remove the bags. So I was less than impressed with him by now.
We went like the clappers on towards Phuket with the driver laughing every time he had a close call, I am not sure if I should have said something but on retrospect maybe I should have. We made it to Phuket and were dropped off at a travel agents were they pushed there hotels on everyone, except me, I must have looked to cheap or something, then I had to load up into a different car for the journey into Phuket town, my new driver just dropped me off in the middle of town and was going to leave without saying were I was, for all I knew I might not have been in phuket at all, I managed to get from him a road I needed not that he seemed happy about telling me. Great day, why do people backpack again??
After 5 minutes I managed to find some land marks that related to my map and soon found the back packers, dorm room excellent, as it turned out it was not so bad. I was staying in the same room as a couple of Canadians who seemed nice enough, they recommended a restaurant around the corner so me the two Canadians and a girl from Belguim headed off for food then we were going to head out for drinks and a bar down the road. The food was good and the night was fairly interesting with a fairly big group of us heading out. I did not drink too much as was not really feeling into it, but the other made up for my lack of drinking tenfold. There was a few sick people on the way home and in the morning. The bar we went to was having a first anniversary party not that the drinks were cheap in fact they were more than triple the normal price, the music was pretty good and they even played a load of international music as well, Later I wandered home with some Bulgarians around midnight as I was heading to the beach the next day with an Aussie girl.