So much for that. Due to a stroke of unprecedented intellectual thrust, I decided the boat to get to Bangkok left at 1.30 instead of 1, which left Dani convinced I'd been mugged, killed or run off with her money, passport and ticket. So had to wait another day to get the ferry to the mainland - stayed in a rather poxy hotel in Ban Kai area, on the south coast. I rather liked the area - long deserted beaches with lots of flotsam and jetsam, too shallow for swimming and not popular for snorkelling, leaving it remarkably tourist free. You can walk into the water for about half a mile without going deeper than your knees; intermittent reefs and sandbanks abound. Met a Malaysian bloke who had wandered out like us and was fishing for octopus with a piece of crab tied to the end of string. Unsuccessful, but he did find a blowfish which I've never seen in real life before. They are the most peculiar looking things: like a cross between an owl and a gargoyle, as round as a football, all poisonous spikes and almost no fins and an amusing tendency to squirt water from its gargoyle spout when gingerly raised from the water.
The next day was solid travel: left hotel at 11, caught the ferry without problem, bus into town, then after a 3 hour wait in nowhere-land in town, onto the proper bus - which was far worse than the one we came to the island on though it claimed the same facilities - video not working which was irritating, and reclining seat not working which was bloody hell. We ended up cavalierly using someone else's rucksack to lie on. So, not much sleep when at 5 am, the back wheel left the bus and went skating into the oncoming traffic as the bus lurched down and screeched along on its base. Since we were somewhere in Bangkok at that point, the driver left everyone fend for themselves and get taxis or sort themselves out somehow. But myself and Dani were down to 30p, so had to hassle him until he gave us money to get into town.
Got in around 6 am, and found the reliable tour operators whom I'd used before were open and the bus to Kanbunachari was leaving at 7. Which just gave us time to use the shower in the tour office, have some of their coffee, and get money. And sit around for another hour while the bus was late.
The tour was excellent, though. JEATH museum first - photos, drawings, relics and accounts of POW life. Then a very fast boat up to the Bridge Across the River Kwai: wandered across it and back, then got a slow train along the death railway (1 person died for every sleeper on the track. Over the course of an hour and a half journey, that adds up to a lot of people dead in beautiful scenery). Lunch on a floating restaurant, then a bamboo raft down the river to an elephant conservation centre, and riding on elephants. The bamboo rafting was alright - the driver was a trainee, and kept bashing into trees, but the river was wide and smooth and fast, so got there quickly. Riding elephants was fun, though I don't think I'd do it as a long term thing: the motion as they lurch slowly from 1 foot to another is rather uncomfortable. You sit on flat double seats tied onto the middle of the elephant's back: the driver sits on the shoulders and head and yells at the elephant, occasionally kicking it's ears, and sometimes using a stick with a blunt metal hook at the end to add persuasion - not too forcefully, as far as I could see, though one driver on the baby elephant (which insisted on accompanying its mother) did start to get a bit irate when the baby went for a swim and wallow while he was still on top.
Finally got back to Bangkok around 6; pretty exhausted but decided to keep going: ate out and explored the Pat Pong area in the evening. It's a combination of fake designer clothes market with red light district. The red light aspect consisted entirely of bars with strippers and assorted acts - no shops like Soho; no window dressing like Amsterdam; just bars with dodgy guys outside who have menus of the acts available - razor blades (? don't want to know); ping pong balls; girl-boy; girl-girl; cigarette; writing; peel banana. Those girls have skills. Most places offer free entry to look, but you have to buy a drink or entrance within 30 seconds of sitting down or you're chucked out again. Which is what I suggest for any interested tourist, since 30 seconds of most acts is probably enough. In one place, we succumbed and got Coke under the agreement it'd cost 100 baht (1.50) and we could stay as long as we wanted: the person we ordered from then disappeared and someone else came along and started demanding 300 baht for drinks and entrance. After considerable argument, we got it back down to 100 baht & we should leave. We left. (The act, by the way, was an egg act: an egg is inserted and then ejected down into a waiting bowl of water. Really, 30 seconds was more than enough.)
Finally, saw Dani off to the airport, got back to the hotel around 4am, and collapsed. Today, I've just been deciding what to do... Laos is next, I think; just deciding where I want to go there.