Day 14, Monday 4 November 2013 - Bangkok

Koh Kradan departure..... It's time not only to bid farewell to Paradise Lost but to Koh Kradan, Trang Province and this 2 week tour. I've arranged for a boat collection at 10.30am so I have plenty of time to get a breakfast and settle up with Nok at Paradise Lost.
Of course, I've had to pay considerably more for my food here being dependant on the resort but that in itself would not put me over budget. As I suspected when I decided to travel to Kradan, I have to pay for the whole boat back to the mainland.
As I clamber aboard, it doesn't seem like the end of my island tour as the long-tailed boat departs Koh Kradan and glides across the still waters for the 1 hour journey towards the mainland. It seems the holiday is not over just yet. However, at the pier a van is waiting. I've been able to contact the driver of the van that brought me here. It's disappointing for him that there are no other passengers. He heads for Haad Yao hoping for customers but there are none. He waits a while and I get some time to look around this pier that serves Koh Libong.
This island is large enough to have roads so as well as having a passenger terminal there is a car ferry of sorts too. I realize I'm going to have to pay the driver more than the trip here but at least he's agreed to drop me at the airport saving me a further charge. Just one more passenger gets picked up on this 60 kilometre journey. At 1.15 pm I'm at Trang airport. As airports go, this is small, just 2 gates but unlike Hat Yai it is a domestic airport only. I'm sure Trang is no bigger than my home town but Thailand's air travel network excels, fortunately for Thai people and farang (foreigners). My earlier flight to Hat Yai was actually my first internal flight and a bargain too.
Air Asia flight FD 3244..... This flight is on time but the Airbus 320-200 doesn't arrive at the terminal building until around 2.15 pm. There is no competition for air space though and apart from the runway, there is just one runoff to the terminal building and space for two aircraft. With no refueling necessary this flight is airborne at 3 pm. This rapid turnaround I'm just not used to. The flight is uneventful, which is as it should be I suppose. The aircraft is hardly full and I get a window seat noting some familiar features. There is virtually no cloud cover as the aircraft makes it's decent into Don Meuang airport. It lands at 4.10 pm. It takes longer waiting for a city bus and battling through the traffic than it's taken to get from Trang. You can tell I'm really excited now!
Final thoughts..... This has been an epic tour, the longest since I started this website in 2011. I've managed to keep my log going throughout even though I was unable to upload my work on occasions. At nearly 15,000 words it has to be the largest tour log I've written. With one exception in Satun, I've spent the whole tour on four islands and a few important lessons have been learnt. The obvious one is that island touring is expensive but perhaps more surprising is the fact that I built in an extra allowance for Malaysia and that leg came out on budget. It was the Thai islands that I underestimated. Although island hopping is expensive, I didn't achieve any advantage by returning to the mainline. However by taking in the two small islands of Lipe and Kradan I managed to reach the full limits of my expectations and that in itself has reinforced the tour's success. As a final thought and dilemma for future tours, there is always one question for me. When to decide I've had enough of one location and move onto the next? In the nineteen days I've been on the two tours, I've stayed in seven locations. When talking to Nok at Paradise Lost she claims an 85% return rate. I seem to be the odd one out but then again if I wasn't, this website wouldn't exist.
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