Overland from Koh Tao to Phuket

The ferry portion of the journey went smoothly. We paid 820THB at Lotus Travel for the entire journey. Songserm was the ferry provider and the boat left pretty much on time for Koh Phangan. At Phangan we switched boats for one heading to Koh Samui and the Don Sak Ferry Terminal. At Don Sak, there were buses waiting to take us onward. All going smoothly so far...till we got to Surat Thani. We were taken to a transfer station outside of town with almost no stores or restaurants around and told we'd have to wait an hour there. The staff at this place was incredibly rude and unhelpful despite their fake nice demeanor. I asked a guy if I could see a map of Phuket which they had shown us earlier and he tried to ignore me even though I asked 4 times after which I just picked it up off the table that he was sitting at and he flipped out. Wanker! The one hour wait turned into a 1.5 hour wait and when I asked what the holdup was they produced some more bullshit about there not being a bus available yet and that we'd have to wait another hour. Others ended up paying an additional 300THB to hire a minibus to their destinations because they got tired of waiting. I reported this news back to everyone and sensing the mood changing the staff rounded us up into a songthaew and took us to a random petrol station where a government bus eventually showed up to refuel and we got on. While we were waiting for this bus they were "joking" that we'd have to spend the night in Surat Thani. Not funny. We finally reached Phuket Town at about 11pm and walked down to the main road to get a tuktuk since the ones at the bus park were trying to rip us off. 14 hours total travel time. Unpleasant.