I told the guy who owns this hotel that I wanted to cancel early. This place was nowhere near a beach. I don’t mind a walk through the jungle, but beside eight lane roads? No thank you. He told me it was not possible to refund the money. I placed a cancellation request on the website and figured I would deal with it later.
The driver was a bit late. “Lot of tlaffic.” A french couple with a young girl were the only other passengers.
We drove down to Phuket Town to the ferry dock and exchanged our vouchers for four tickets, an outbound a return, a lunch voucher and snorkel equipment voucher. Total cost for the day? $1.000 (or $1,000 if you use decimal commas as is done in the US, $33 in U.S. currency. Somebody took my outbound and return vouchers while the French couple only had their outbound tickets taken. When I started to object, I was told that the French couple were staying on the island. I didn’t know that was an option, damn, that is cheap.
Five boats abreast, we left the pier and crossed over boats until we got to ours. I started to take a seat but was directed to first class, which held about 300 passengers. I would guess the whole boat would hold about a thousand. After half an hour we set sail. The skies turned grey, the water churned, sixty foot boats were tossed about and nearly obscured by the waves. Our boat, well over a hundred feet started to smash down onto the sea. Some people took delight, some laughed, some prayed and some vomited. Others discussed a ferry that had recently sunk in Thailand.
I finished off one Agatha Christie and started another. The ride got worse, or better depending on your perspective. Finally they announced that the trip was being called off on account of sea conditions and we turned around and returned to port. Boatload after boatload of people milled about, many sick, wondering what to do next. I went out front to have a cigarette and called Lee, the guy I had bought the tour from. He was going to call the boat company and confirm and then call the driver to pick me up. I returned inside, the driver located me and the rest of the party. I asked the driver to drop me off at the tour company. I wanted either a refund or to book another tour.
He dropped me off at the 7-Eleven near my hotel. I headed back out, found the bus stop this time and waited a short while for the “bus” a long flatbed truck/covered wagon affair with three long padded benches in the rear, running lengthwise. I was handed a receipt for 10 baht and paid same. I pulled out my phone and the mapping application told me that we were well past the tour office. Shit! I got off at the next stop and walked around until I realized that I had erroneously created a waypoint on my phone when it didn’t have a GPS fix. It’s amazing that is even an option.
I was hungry and stopped somewhere and had a small portion of some shitty cold Thai food for which I was charged 60 baht, then the price changed to 80 baht. There was no menu, I had just pointed and was subjected to whatever charge they felt would be appropriate for the farang. (pronounced “falang”) or foreigner. I was going to continue on the bus until I saw that there were two routes served, 2 and 3 and that I had no idea where either went. Ah, well, it’s just a few miles, I could hoof it. I walked past a fork in the road. Any bus stopping here was surely going the direction I needed to go. This time the bus was a double decker airconditioned bus and the fare was 30 Baht. It took a turn and I was no longer heading toward my intended destination.
It started to rain worse and I took shelter at another restaurant. Bowl after bowl of curried everything. I wanted a sample of each. The little muslim girl smiled very politely and I sat down to wait. She took a seat elsewhere. WTF? The food was already hot, I didn’t want rice, just serve it up. I tried again. This time I got a much bigger smile. Still no service. I downloaded a Thaii translator app and wrote request in English and translated it to Thai and showed it to her. An evening bigger smile that lasted a long time.
I approached A guy in the building next door spoke English and helped me out. He told me that the translation meant nothing. It translates back to Thank you for example but there is no rice. I told him I wanted a sample of everything, he told the girl and soon I was served a tray with eight little bows, each with two or three spoonfuls of wonderful Thai food with fish, chicken, beef and different curries. I showed hThey were all very good, the man was kind of amused that I didn’t find them extremely spicy. Actually, the flavor was very good and I found it not particularly hot. I ordered a big bowl of the sour fish and finished it off. The price? 50 baht for a heaping portion of a variety of Thai food. That’s less than 2 USD if you haven’t been paying attention
Now, where the hell was the tour shop? I called Lee and he told me that it was next to some place I would never hazard a guess how to spell. I handed the phone to the kind gentleman who was helping me out and as it turns out, was the owner of the restaurant, I think and asked him to write down the name so I could search for it on google maps. R-O-B-I-N-S-O-N D-E-P-A-R-T-M-E-N-T S-T-O-R-E. I googled it, it was just a couple of miles away. Screw it, it was no longer raining, I needed the exercise and this would be easier than trying to figure out the buses without a bus route.
A big thanks to the man and I asked him to pose with the food and the server girl who promptly ran away when he told her what I was up to. There a picture, geolocated yet.
A short while later I arrived at the shop, Lee greeted me warmly and gave me a full refund. Now what to do? I considered a three day jungle type thing, but it involved elephant riding and having seen how elephants are “broken” I couldn’t really do that. Next, three days of snorkeling. That looked awesome. Wait? What?11 dives off a dive boat? Sign me up!
The “bus” passed in front of the shop, I hopped on and headed back to the hotel. I slipped the attendant a slip of paper with some Thai writing on it, telling him of my stop. Fifteen minutes later I was at the bus stop closest to my hotel and walked back without misadventure.
Later it was time for dinner. I walked down and smelled something delicious. The owner of the hotel wrote something down on a piece of paper and directed me to the restaurant. I don’t know what it was, but it was awesome. The tiny meal was not enough to sate me and I wanted something else. The entire menu was written in Thai and there were no pictures. The patrons were all Thai locals and I had fun with the giggling girls and the matronly shop owner. For an hour and a half we interacted, them speaking not a word of English and me not a word of Thai. What really kept me around was the music sixties American classics. I had a phone app that I used identify music I liked that I had never heard before. Well it was time to pay for the best food I have had in years, the total? 80 Baht, less than three bucks.
Jonathan Allen LaFleur