Moving west

After being woken by the guest next door coughing up a lung at 5:30am this morning, we left our hotel. George was delighted at check out when the hotel gave us a partial refund for leaving early. 😳

Today we took the two hour bus ride from East to West Thailand. It's the very thin bit! It was 1.5 hours curling around the roads uphill. And then 30 minutes flying down the other side. 

Our bus interior was quite bizarre - check out the ceiling.  Every bus has blue curtains as standard. Usually with frilly hanging bits. Luckily we didn't have those dust collectors today. 

Our destination today was Ranong which is the sea border with Myanmar (Burma). Sadly we can't visit due to the war and the FCDO advising against all travel. As we crossed into Ranong Province we stopped at a checkpoint for the police to board the bus, check us out and had a look at the luggage. 

The seating system and ticketing on the journey today was quite ridiculous. Mostly tourists boarded the coach, no one had seat numbers so we sat down wherever we could. 

Once the coach was moving, the assistant came round, asked our names, and then rifled through the tickets and handed them out. Then we all had to play bus chess as we were in the wrong seats. 

Literally ten minutes after those fun and games, the assistant returned to collect our tickets back 🤣. 

We are staying at a lovely old guesthouse on the outskirts of town. It's like Little House on the Prairie.  Lovely big room, walk in wardrobe room and big terrace out the back to ourselves. 

The purpose of our visit is to attend the nearby Immigration Centre to extend our visa. We left Vietnam early in January due to the bad weather, which has resulted in the need to extend our current visa for a few more days. 

Our taxi is booked for tomorrow at 9am. We have lots of paperwork to take, and also a book to read as it may be a long day.  I'll let you know how we get on.