Our train pulled into the Surat Thani station at about 6:20 am. From there we transferred into a tour bus which took us to the Raja Public Ferry, about an hour and a half away.
Soon after arriving we boarded the ferry. It was a fairly large boat and could easily hold 120 people on it. By the time we pulled away from the dock at 9:30 am I was starving. We hadn't had an opportunity to have breakfast and the snack bar on the ferry didn't have anything substantial. It was a good thing we had some trail mix, granola bars, and jerky to hold us over until lunch.
It took just under 2 hours to get from the mainland to the island. There were several transportation companies which were tying to get business from people arriving on the island. All their prices were abnormally high, 300 Baht ($9.45) per person. We weren't willing to pay their prices and told them we were going to find a cab. They told us that cab companies were not allowed on the pier and it was a 15 minute walk to the nearest main road. We started walking and they all watched us in disbelief. After about 5 minutes one of the drivers pulled up in his car and said he would take the four us to our hotel for 800 Baht ($25). We took him up on his offer. He told us if we got pulled over we were his friends and just arrived on the island to visit him. We were not tourists and he was not giving us a ride as a taxi driver. Fortunately, we got on the main road without issue and finally got the Honey Samui Resort around noon.
Our hotel was steps from a beautiful calm lagoon with fine white sandy beaches. We had finally made it to the relaxing part of the trip. We had the next three days to relax in paradise drinking mango smoothies and enjoying some downtime.
There were a few thing we needed to take care of. First we needed to do some laundry, we were almost out of clean clothes. We also needed to get more cash as that was getting low as well.
The rest of the day was spent on the beach. Around dinner time we went out to the main road and eventually decided on pizza. We had a choice to sit in the resort or out on the beach, of course we chose the beach!
