Update
Okay, my last long post was from Surat Thani, and it's high time I gave a complete update, with pictures and all.
We were in Surat Thani intending to make a day trip to a place called Chiaya where there are a few temples and similar sights. We got the idea because it said in a couple of guide books that Surat Thani was mainly as interest for making day trips to Chiaya.
When we went to the bus station, as I said, we encountered lots of scammers. Weell, some of them might not have been scammers, but they were all trying to make money out of us.
First we approached a songthaew driver (a songthaew, which literally is translated as "two rows" or "two planks", is a pick up truck with two benches either side of the back and is used as a type of share taxi in many parts of Thailand) who tried to charge us 250 baht or so, which is more than we were willing to pay, and more than the guide book recommended, more importantly, we wanted to get a local bus, the same as Thai people would get if they wanted to go to Chiaya. So we tried to communicate with him and figure out where to get the bus from, and some helpful guy told us we needed to go to the other bus station which was just up the road (the guide book had told us to go to the station we were at). We headed that direction anyway...
...we got to the other station and three guys ran towards us asking "where you go?", "you want ticket?", "you need bus?" One guy (wearing an Irish jersey) was referring to a piece of paper with Thai writing on it, then speaking to us in English, he must have written the English phonetically in Thai, he asked us if we wanted to buy tickets, expecting us to hand over the money directly to him.
We ended up just getting too much hassle and decided to get out of there, we were getting paranoid that we would be mugged and robbed if we got on a bus. As we walked away, Sheena looked into a tourist office and saw some westeners in there and we decided to pop in and ask for some advice. We got chatting to the owner, a Danish man who we then told our further plans were to go to Kaoh Sok national park. He told us a friend of his had a guest house there, and his friend just happened to be in town, and that his friend would be willing to give us a free lift that night to the national park if we wanted to stay with him. We had already booked into our hotel for the night so weren't going to head there until the next day. Then his friend came back into the office and we shook hands and said hello. He seemed nice. It turned out that he had business in Surat Thani that night and wouldn't be going down until thew morning. We decided to give it a shot because the Danish guy told us we wouldn't have to pay for anything up front and we could pay when we arrived, so if we weren't satisfied, we could just leave. The guest house's owner was named Tawee and he asked us when we were going to get up, because we were on holiday so it was up to us to decide what time we wanted to get up. We arranged to meet him at the tourist office the next morning.
I was a little skeptical that things worked out so perfectly, but we weren't paying for anything so we took the risk anyway.
As it turned out Tawee was one of the nicest people we've met so far and our visit to Kaoh Sok has been one of the highlights of the trip to date.
We were in Surat Thani intending to make a day trip to a place called Chiaya where there are a few temples and similar sights. We got the idea because it said in a couple of guide books that Surat Thani was mainly as interest for making day trips to Chiaya.
When we went to the bus station, as I said, we encountered lots of scammers. Weell, some of them might not have been scammers, but they were all trying to make money out of us.
First we approached a songthaew driver (a songthaew, which literally is translated as "two rows" or "two planks", is a pick up truck with two benches either side of the back and is used as a type of share taxi in many parts of Thailand) who tried to charge us 250 baht or so, which is more than we were willing to pay, and more than the guide book recommended, more importantly, we wanted to get a local bus, the same as Thai people would get if they wanted to go to Chiaya. So we tried to communicate with him and figure out where to get the bus from, and some helpful guy told us we needed to go to the other bus station which was just up the road (the guide book had told us to go to the station we were at). We headed that direction anyway...
...we got to the other station and three guys ran towards us asking "where you go?", "you want ticket?", "you need bus?" One guy (wearing an Irish jersey) was referring to a piece of paper with Thai writing on it, then speaking to us in English, he must have written the English phonetically in Thai, he asked us if we wanted to buy tickets, expecting us to hand over the money directly to him.
We ended up just getting too much hassle and decided to get out of there, we were getting paranoid that we would be mugged and robbed if we got on a bus. As we walked away, Sheena looked into a tourist office and saw some westeners in there and we decided to pop in and ask for some advice. We got chatting to the owner, a Danish man who we then told our further plans were to go to Kaoh Sok national park. He told us a friend of his had a guest house there, and his friend just happened to be in town, and that his friend would be willing to give us a free lift that night to the national park if we wanted to stay with him. We had already booked into our hotel for the night so weren't going to head there until the next day. Then his friend came back into the office and we shook hands and said hello. He seemed nice. It turned out that he had business in Surat Thani that night and wouldn't be going down until thew morning. We decided to give it a shot because the Danish guy told us we wouldn't have to pay for anything up front and we could pay when we arrived, so if we weren't satisfied, we could just leave. The guest house's owner was named Tawee and he asked us when we were going to get up, because we were on holiday so it was up to us to decide what time we wanted to get up. We arranged to meet him at the tourist office the next morning.
I was a little skeptical that things worked out so perfectly, but we weren't paying for anything so we took the risk anyway.
As it turned out Tawee was one of the nicest people we've met so far and our visit to Kaoh Sok has been one of the highlights of the trip to date.
posted by Alan at 6:30 AM
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