Travel day

As normally happens after you spend a good deal of your time doing little more than sleeping and eating and drinking and reading and swimming, you eventually must pay the world back for your excess of luxury by submitting to the travel day. So, after weeks on Koh Tao and Koh Samui, and motivated by the fact that Nate's Thai visa was about to expire, we embarked upon our thirty some odd hour quest to make if from Thailand's East coast all the way to Malaysia's Northwest coast.
We started out by walking for two and a half hours towards the ferry. Then we boarded a bus that drove us around the island to a different ferry terminal. Then we boarded a very large boat. Then the bus we had just arrived in boarded the same boat in a hold beneath the boat. Then we sailed across the Gulf of Thailand. Then we arrived at Donsak where we got off the boat. Then we got back on the bus. Then we drove for an hour and a half toward Surat Thani. Then we found out that the direct minibus we planned to take straight to Malaysia was twice as expensive as we thought it would be. Then we changed plans. Then we boarded a local bus toward the train station. Then we found out that the train ticket to Malaysia was twice as expensive as we thought it would be, about the same as the minibus. Then we changed plans again. Then we bought very cheap night train tickets to Hat Yai, a city close to the border. Then we played cribbage and rummy while we waited five hours for the train. Then we slept for a few hours. Then we woke at the crack of dawn. Then we found out that a minivan to Satun (where we need to get to catch a ferry to Langkawi, Malaysia) was more expensive than we thought. Then we changed plans once again. Then we caught a cab to the local bus station. Then we caught a local bus towards Satun. Then we arrived in Satun and caught a taxi to the ferry. Then we found out that Nate was being charged 500 Baht ($15) for overstaying his visa by one day. Then we sat down and waited three hours for the ferry. Then we finally boarded our ferry, taking us an hour and a half towards Langkawi, a place that we would find to be lovely, would change our idea of traveling for a while, and would wholly justify the effort. When we found out that it is also a duty free, and that everything is ridiculously cheap we all wept just a little bit.
By traveling in such a circuitous way rather than just taking a bus or train direct, we cut our expenses in half and saved ourselves over a day of living on the road.