We'd arrived in Phuket Town from Ko Pha Ngan a couple of days earlier, ending up in the middle of the city at some ungodly hour after a pretty rough journey — not exactly in the mood to trek around Phuket hunting for cheap accommodation.
I left Ilze sitting on a bench with our bags and walked half of Phuket Town looking for somewhere to spend the next few nights at a reasonable price. Eventually, after a lot of walking, I stumbled upon the On-On Hotel — the hotel where Leonardo DiCaprio's film The Beach was shot.
Old, decrepit, worn out and minimally clean, the On-On offered us the best prices in Phuket city. So we moved in and made it our base for our last days in Thailand.
We seriously considered sleeping in the park next to this clock
From Phuket Town we explored the peninsula, mostly using local songthaews to reach the various beaches, and walking when the mood took us.
But on our last day on the Phuket peninsula we left it too late. The last buses had already gone through that part of the island and we found ourselves walking back to the hotel… more than 20 kilometres away!
OK Ilze, looks like we're hitchhiking today.
There wasn't much traffic, and most of it was motorbike taxis, so our hopes weren't high. We kept walking and sticking our thumbs out.
Halfway up a hill, a motorcyclist stopped to ask where we were headed. He was going to a village halfway along and offered to take us that far.
Naturally, being a good Thai, he had no helmet. The motorbike was small with a tiny engine and didn't look particularly encouraging.
The glance we exchanged was brief. Very brief.
OK, let's go. No helmets and three of us crammed on a motorbike… Still better than walking to Phuket.
Three people plus two backpacks piled onto said motorbike — we had to push to get going up the hill. But then the descent began: curves, zigzagging between cars, bikes and lorries, the three of us asking him a couple of times to slow down a little because with us and all the luggage it was hard to stay on properly.
Our new motorcyclist friend started asking about our lives and adventures, and when he confirmed there were no more buses leaving from his village to Phuket Town at that hour, he offered to take us all the way there.
And that is how we hitchhiked a motorbike in Thailand and lived to tell the tale.
