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We booked our tickets off the island through a local agent, realising they would be a little more expensive but we wanted to ensure that we had our tickets in advance - not wanting to get stranded anywhere late at night with Tehya.

The boat off the island is a flat rate of 150 Baht per person and you buy the ticket from the pier on the day you wish to leave. There is a fast boat for 350 Baht - if you are in a hurry! The bus from Ranong to ChumPorn was 290 Baht per person, including a taxi pick up at the pier to the bus.

Bangkok's King's Palace

We later found out you can get a local taxi for 20 Baht and the bus to ChumPorn is 120 Baht - so we did pay well over the odds going through an agent. The train tickets from ChumPorn to Bangkok were 800 Baht and if we had bought them direct from the station they would have been about 500 Baht - so again we paid well over the odds.

We bought the tickets from the agent with the idea that it would make life more simple and straight forward. The agent had reassured us of all the connections - as of course they are the experts. We got the afternoon boat at 2.30pm and arrived promptly in Ranong at 4.15pm, where we were picked up by Pon - who was waiting on the quay and delivered us to the bus station at 4.30pm.

Our bus was due to leave at 5pm for the one hour 45 minute journey - which should have meant that we arrived in ChumPorn at 6.45pm in plenty of time for our 7.30pm train. The reality was the bus left at 5.00pm and it was a two and a half hour journey - we still had to collect our train tickets from an associated travel agent.

Bangkok's Government building

The bus stopped briefly for me to jump out and get the tickets, thankfully we had met some other travellers on the bus who were really friendly and as we pulled up to the station they ran in to hold up the train so we could get Tehya and our luggage onto the platform. It was a total nightmare of stress - I was so angry!

If we missed the train we would have lost out on over priced train tickets and had to buy more - as it is the only night train we would have had to pay for a hotel too. The bus driver could not have driven the journey between Ranong and ChumPorn any faster with out killing us all - so to say it is a 1 hour 45 minute journey is a joke.

The guards held up the train and were not very happy about it - we said a rushed thanks to the travellers and train guards and got on at the very end of the train. We had to walk the length of the train which was nine carriages before we reached the place where we would be sleeping for the night.

We spent the evening in the restaurant carriage eating train food, drinking beer and learning some Thai from the waiters (buying them beer). It was a pretty funny evening…There were quite a lot of train police on board as well as there are often reports of troubles in the south. They were all very busy drinking a large bottle of whiskey or two.

The train got into Bangkok at 4.30am 1 1/2 hours early. We found a taxi and made our way to the Khao San area and booked into a hotel. The Villa Cha Cha was booked up so we went across the road to the Green Hotel and collapsed into bed and slept until well after mid day.