Flying with the fish to Koh Tao

Bangkok, Thailand, 6/12/11

It's 5:30pm when I get back my JJ Market. The unfriendly travel agent at my hostel says all the trains to Koh Tao have left or are sold out for the evening. I don't believe her, I know they run until past midnight. She loses her easy commission and I head straight to the train station. Sure enough, plenty of vacancy.

1400Baht ($42) buys the overnight train to Chumpon , an on-board multi-course curry meal, beer, and a ferry to Koh Tao island. Second class status means a full bed in a car jammed with other backpackers from England, Dubai, and San Francisco. By 10pm, we're hopping from bed to bed, annoying the locals foolish enough to purchase backpackers class. Later in the night, we switch to tall 40 oz., to which the waitress mocks us being girly and weak.

As this is my first experience with overnight transportation, I soon learn that we're on "Thailand Time", meaning the train will arrive when it arrives, schedules and time tables be damned. This philosophy will define almost all of my long-course travel in Thailand. Although the train is direct, we make half a dozen stops each for 30 minutes. During one such stop, we hear a loud atom bomb-like explosion and the conductor worries aloud that we may need to switch trains.

One of the train employees shines a light in my eyes at 5am, signing our arrival in Chumpon. We're only an hour late, a blessing considering many of us thought the train was going to explode. Next, we hop aboard a small ferry, which is making the rounds between the island trifecta of Koh Tao, Koh Samui, and Koh Pha Ngan.

The weather is a breezy 90 degrees and the sky is perfectly clear as the sun comes up around the boat. It's a three hour ferry ride and we're led to our island destination by schools of long-leaping flying fish.

I sit on the bow and talk to three English coeds about going to Jewish sleepaway camp. Almost everyone on the boat is heading to the Full Moon Party four days early to stake out accommodations and begin the pre-party. But I have bigger plans.