Stepping off the tourist bus in any of the tourist-laden towns in Thailand is like covering your arm in syrup and entering a bees nest. The tourist agencies flock to farangs (foreigners) that have just stepped off the bus or boat offering to sell reservations, transport, and tours for the next leg of your journey. They follow you asking insistently where you’re staying, how you will get there and where you are going next. At the same time they are reassuring you that the hotel which you intended to stay at is closed or full but the hotel for which they have a wrinkled brochure is nice with hot water and fans. The highest concentration of this that we’ve seen so far on our trip has been on Ko Phi Phi–a beautiful island in the Andaman Sea, and a haven for backpackers and tourists alike.Thailand has a great train system and a very comprehensive inter-city, air-conditioned bus system but as a farang its somewhat difficult to find. Going to Ko Phi Phi, the only way to the island is on a boat run by a private travel agency. Coming back from the island to Krabi, it drops you off at a pier far from town. The Krabi bus station is not near the center of town either. Getting between these two points your only options are cabs, trucks and tuk tuks all of which get a kickback for taking you to a travel agency that will send you on your way via “1st Class Minibus” (which sometimes means a van with broken AC). These minibusses can be nice or they can be relatively run down, involve a lot of stops and cost more than the regular Thai bus system.

Getting a train ticket on Ko Phi Phi is nearly impossible as well. The nearest train station is Surat Thani, about 3 hours from Krabi. The Thai train system does not accept online or telephone reservations. Some travel agents can arrange tickets for you, and we found one website that claims you can sometimes get tickets via email if its 14 days in advance. On Ko Phi Phi, every travel agent we went to claims to sell train tickets but after an unusually short phone call one agent told us all the trains to Bangkok were full for every day we wanted to leave but she could sell us a VIP bus ticket for any day we wished. We decided to ignore the agents and booked a boat/van combo to Surat Thani.

It turns out there were train tickets available (although no sleepers for that evening) and we spent 14 hours in 3rd class with some friendly Thai kids for only USD $8.50 each.