Day three… oh dearie me 🤣

Well the morning started at around 6am, we saw that there was a speed boat 🚤 set to go at 7.30am. We chilled out then checked out and headed down around 7am, I then ask the guy I want to buy a ticket for the 7.30am… he looks at the sign… looks at me…. looks at the sign and back to me again and says “no 7.30, only 8am”. I look at the sign, I look at him (looking at me). 8am it is then.

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e boat comes in and we are off, this is it, we are going to get this all back on track, get to where we need to.

Arriving back finally we are then taken to the wharf we should have originally been taken to and it was chaos!!!! Boats pushing and ramming each other for spot, people pulling at you or yelling.

Find our way to immigration and go through the process, a guy walks us down to his boat (that has a slight stream of water in the bottom of it)

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m thinking “it’s ok, I’m sure 1000’s of people have been on this boat and survived”.

We take off after ramming and pulling our way free.

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get to the other side and the wharf we came from looks like a calm tea party to this one. It’s insane, people trying to grab your bags to “help” and point you in different directions. We make our way to immigration and go through that process. Next is to work out how to get up to darwei. The original plan was to fly but we are told that you need to book well in advance. We decide on a bus 🚌. It costs us 35,000 each (that’s $35 AUD). We chill out at a cafe and eat some horrible food to pass the time (the iced coffees were nice)

We finally jump onto the mini bus and head on our journey, it’s 12pm.

The drive ahead we have been told is going to be about 14 plus hours. The road are not what you would call roads…. it’s like being in a rally car or going four wheel driving the whole time snaking around the mountains. 2 hours in a couple in the back just behind us are yelling to stop, she has started throwing up because the bumps and winds are so intense, she scrambled through us with a bag of vomit 🤮 spilling it everywhere, we all vacate like there is a fire 🔥 going on.

After a while she is ok and we are back into it, about 1.5 hours later a guy behind us decides he wants to join the party and start throwing up in a bag…. this ride is….. I can’t put it into words… unique to anything I have done before. About an hour after him a little girl towards the front is the final victim to let go of her lunch. We stop along the way at different locations, to eat, drink and stretch. I try to avoid the “bathrooms” as this is what they are like –

The villages we stop at are usually all dirt roads, rubbish just thrown around. We are definitely in a under developed country.

The bus ride is so violent on us with the bumps my Apple Watch actually thinks I have been doing exercise all day long.

At 12.30am we arrive in Myeik (only half way to our destination). We are told we need to get off this bus and wait 5 hours for another, everything is lost in translation. We are tired, we are hot, confused, sore and just want to get to our accomodation that is already arranged.

We are asked to stay at the depot in a room that resembles a storage room, rubbish just outside the door (or gate, whatever you want to call it) and there are a few people having a nap in there, it may look like a bed but it’s not, it’s a plank of wood, we suck it up and stay the night to finish off our already challenging day. 12 hours on a bus is draining and more to come tomorrow.