*it shall be insanely cheap to get there
*it shall have cheap and clean accommodations
*it shall have cheap and delicious food
*it shall be accessible- easy to navigate but of course not too "touristy"
*it shall be the most beautiful place we've ever seen
*it shall be everything we could ever dream of at a price so low we have never dared dream it
Our guidebooks had lost some credibility after they failed to warn us how shaming trying to haggle would be. So we had forgotten one of its most prevalent warnings: If a taxi or tuktuk driver tells you something is closed, they're lying.
Forgetting that was how we ended up at a Travel Agency when what we wanted was the city bus station. There's no way to know what our driver's commission was on the tickets we purchased to Krabi, Thailand. But to Krabi we would go.
Kady and I squeezed in three of our four "must-do-in-bangkok"-s before we arrived at the travel agency where we were first introduced to the concept of Southeast Asia's "HURRY UP!!!! (and wait)".
This is just how they roll. They deceptively state their departure or arrival or opening or closing time at specific, precise time intervals such as 6:10am or 3:40 pm. Everyone in the whole world knows that 2pm means somewhere between 2 and 2:30 pm, but when you start throwing around ":10s" or ":25s"... it means serious business. Right?
Wrong.
We were ushered into a pickup truck, driven all over Bangkok, then dropped at a corner in the touriest touristy tourist block. We waited for fifteen minutes. At thirty minutes, we were both quite agitated. The two dollar gin and tonics were calling our names and at 33 minutes, I was on the patio ordering one for each. At 45 minutes we were both on the patio with all our luggage. At 57 minutes, we were sure we'd been scammed and had purchased counterfeit tickets. At one hour and twenty minutes, I was crossing the street to call what was surely a phony number to this phony travel agency that had probably packed up and skipped town. I was half-way across the street when Kady screamed my name and I turned around to see 27 backpackers bounding along...
They transferred us another kilometer or two and within twenty minutes I was snuggling in on an air-conditioned coach tour bus with the super nerdy and embarrassing "Euro-travel cozy" I carry around on travel days. An American film played on the tv and I was ready for the Dutch we'd be-friended to shut up about his dislike of Germans (you see Germans are everywhere in giant groups of Germans speaking German and if he wanted to be surrounded by Germans speaking German, he can do that at home bla bla bla) as I sweetly drifted in and out of sleep for the next eight hours.
These tour buses are organized to get you to spend as much money possible at as many commission-earning posts en route. So their stops are strategic and mostly unnecessary. And never anywhere you would actually want to stop. Even the place Kady and I had been abandoned for nearly two hours came with instructions: "one stay, one shop". After much of this unnecessary stopping and my stubborn refusal to pay those kind of prices ($2 for noodles?! it should be 50 cents!), we were finally finally on our final bus to Krabi. We nicknamed it the Honeymoon bus.
We had made friends with a German couple and bonded over our outrage at the inconsistency of the prices of tickets- some had paid 500 baht, some 2500 baht, for the trip there. Kady and I were somewhat appeased knowing our price fell somewhere in the middle but I was still angry as all I'd ever wanted was to take some five dollar local bus there.
This was our introduction to the final stage of their - ha, I got you, you stupid Westerner travel-scheme: The bus company drops you in the middle of nowhere with no map and offers an outrageous (by outrageous, I mean like $2 a person) price to get you into "town" or to your hotel.
I was really furious at this point and this is probably where I started to have the first signs of a personality change. I had learned to say "I don't have much money" in Thai which I would say sweetly with a smile. Almost as an apology to not buying something. Sitting at this random-in-the-middle-of-nowhere agency, stuffing my pockets with wads of their napkins to use as future toilet paper in a sad attempt to avenge the overpriced coffee, "Mai mi thang" was now a revolution- A revolt against their oppressive snare of a system.
"Oh, so expensive... Mai mi thang... " I said, nicely, in response to the price for taxi.
"Well, if you have no money, you can walk. The taxis run on gasoline. They don't run on water."
I was furious. I knew this "threat" was a bluff (also I'm pretty sure we pay more for our bottled water than they do for their gasoline). So walk I would. I gathered up Kady and the Germans and left in a dramatic huff. We had walked no more than sixty feet when a taxi picked us up for about half the price (four dollars instead of eight haha). Kady and I would have held out for cheaper yet and kept walking but the male half of the German couple wasn't as angry as us and accepted this fare. I had a bittersweet reaction to seeing the logo for the travel company we had just departed from on the van-taxi we piled into.
We left our Germans in pity, as their hotel seemed to not exist and the number to both the hotel and agency that had sold them the ticket seemed to be bad. Kady and I didn't have it as bad as I angrily wanted to believe.
We arrived at our $20 a night bungalow and slept on and off for several hours. That evening we explored and ate at an amazing seafood restaurant with twin midget Thai waitresses. Local youths hanging out on the beach offered Kady and me chicken satay with big smiles as we walked past their Tsunami memorial.
Oysters, crab, rum, etc, etc... for less than $15 US
Kady and I were happy happy happy, overall.
The next day we transferred to a cheaper hotel across from the beach. Surveying the view the next day... we felt we had chosen the perfect Southern Thailand destination.
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