Nias to Bangkok - Highway to Hell

As I was reminded by Sparksy when I caught up with him in Thailand last time, when we were young, tireless whipsnappers we put a few good non stop trips under our belts (mainly spurred on by each other's stupidity and oneupmanship) Maybe its just because I am a little older, but my recent trip from Sorake Beach in Nias to Bangkok, involving car, boat, bus, boat, taxi and train over seven days felt like I was a hamster on a exercise wheel - and as Denis Cometi would say - the hamster is dead but the wheel is still turning.
Together with a couple of other surfers I had arranged a car to take us to Gunungsitoli (click on the map page to see where I went) after a morning surf. My last surf was rudely disrupted by my losmen owner, who when I reached the shore told me that the driver had come to see him to say he couldn't take us. So the losmen owner headed of in to town and for almost double the pre-agreed rate managed to secure us another car. On the road with only an hour or so delay everything seems OK, until we get to Gunungsitoli and are told that all the boats that night are full, except the speed boat, which if we rush we can get on now and buy a ticket on board. So we high tail it down to the port and push through the crowd with our backpacks and boards and somehow manage to scramble on to the boat. We then sit for the next two hours in an over crowded non airconditioned boat waiting for Godot. Eventually we get kicked off because we don't have a ticket, and watch the boat literally sail off in to the sunset. We then had to prevail on UNICEF - or more accurately a fellow surfer we had met in Sorake who worked for UNICEF. He helped us find a room, after trying about 10 hotels which were all full, and organise a ticket for the next day. We managed to finally escape Nias the next day at around 2pm in the afternoon in a far more orderly fashion. (seems the moral here is don't travel on 2 January in Indo, because everyone else already is) But the dramas continued - the car we got in to at Sibolga decided we should stop for a couple of hours for dinner, and then the driver decided that the three 6ft plus surfers should all sit in the back with their knees next to their ears so that an Indo family of short arses could have the front seats with leg room. After an hour of heated argument, we eventually gave in and sat in the back. The night dragged on, and we finally arrived at Prapat at 3.30am in the morning, where my travelling companions alighted - to find their hotel full. Leaving them to find another hotel, the driver then decided to pick another fight and made me sit in the front. The car then refused to start, so at 3.30 am I find myself pushing a car on a highway in Indo wondering how I got there and why I was paying for the priveledge. Sitting in the front of a car in Indo is never a good idea, and it was made even worse by a driver who appeared to intersperse his bouts of nodding off with an erratic and overwhelming desire to overtake abosolutely anything (motorbikes, trucks, semis etc) at what appeared to be the most dangerous times (blind corners, rises etc). I tried to forget that 30,000 people die on Indo roads every year and fall asleep. This however only made things worse as I would periodically be jolted awake and momentarily think my life was coming to an end as bright headlights careered towards me from the opposite direction but the same side of the road, before the driver deftly weaved his way back on to the right side of the road. I have never been so relieved to see the rubbish tip that is Indonesia's third biggest city Medan.I got of the car and said my usual never again.
Medan gave me a little heart attack when the booking agent told me the boat was full and they didn't have a reservation for me - despite me having called two days previously. Do you remember the name of the person you spoke to ? I was asked. I refrained from explaining that in 6 trips to Indo I could remember about 3 names, and eventually much to my relief my details were found, and I was given a ticket. After another three hour wait in the bus we finally make it to the jetty where we wait another hour before the boat heads off to Penang.
After enduring six hours of the coldest air-conditioning I have ever been in (it felt like being in a fridge) and another Van Damme movie, we finally arrived in Penang, after dark.
The next day I took the train for Bangkok - actually more accurately, I bought a ticket for the train to Bangkok, but the delay of the ferry between Penang island and the mainland meant that I missed. Fortunately I was able to arrange for a taxi to chase the train and take me across the border in to Thailand, where I spent three hours waiting for the train to arrive at Hat Yai.
The train did finally arrive and trundled off towards Bangkok, where I finally arrived at around 11 am the next day - four days on the road, pretty much non stop.
I was exhausted, tired and impressed that I had ever undertaken such journeys routinely in my younger years.