Throwing a Few Brickbats

Just wanted to publicly call out a couple of places in Thailand for what I thought was sub-standard service.


THE WAVE SAMUI

This place was written up in Lonely Planet as the only backpacker type place in Hat Chawang, and the best value in the area. All I can say is that the writer of Lonely Planet must be the owners buddy, because this was my experience:

- An AC room is 800 Baht (a lot for a backpacker joint in Thailand) and is in a concrete building on the main road. At least when we were there, numerous bungalows with beach access could be had for the same amount of money, meaning this is in no way a good deal.

- They have a cockroach problem. I had to kill 2 in our room and when we went downstairs early in the morning before things were open and I saw several scurrying out of our way into the kitchen.

- We got our room and the Thai staff said it was OK for us to come down later to fill in the forms and formally check in. Very standard practice in Asia. We went out to get dinner and did not get back until 11:45. We should have checked in before we left but forgot, but usually in Asia this is no big deal. When we came back to the hotel at 11:45 the western owner busted our balls about how he could not believe we did that, etc. I understand we should have filled out the form, but he made this big deal about how since our bags were there with no form he could get in trouble with the police. Yeah right, that is what Thai police are really looking into 24 hours a day. If it such a big deal with him he should take it out on his Thai staff who let us have the key without checking in.

- Now that it was 11:45 and we had no place to stay he told us that we needed to leave a passport with him. I do not leave my passport with anyone, but he had us by the balls in this situation. When we complained he told us that it was the law on Ko Samui that he had to have a passport for us. This was a lie, the Marriott did not require any passport and I am pretty sure they do things by the book. He just wanted the passport as a security deposit, which is his right but is BS, however, someone should have told us this earlier and we would have gone someplace else.

- There is a stocked fridge and snacks in the room, which is nice. However, he makes you count all the stuff, and there are about 50 items, yourself, and sign this affidavit that everything is there when you check in. What a pain. If you want to run a mini-bar then make sure you count everything yourself. Also, he was charging double restaurant rates for a beer, this was approaching Marriott prices, in a hostel type place. What a rip.

- There is a really loud hooker bar across the street, it is open all night.

SONGSERM FERRY/BUS SERVICE

We needed to get from Ko Tao on the east side of the Thai isthmus to Krabi on the west side. These routes are notorious for bus scams, but we needed to make the trip so I held my breath and bought a 750 Baht ferry/bus combo ticket in Ko Tao. I was shown a picture of the ferry that we would take as well as a large bus that would serve the bus portion of the ticket. I specifically asked if the bus was a big bus or a minibus, I was told big. The ferry part started out OK, the ferry was older and pretty low budget, but perfectly serviceable and fine. After 6 hours (the advertised time) we arrived in Surat Thani on the mainland.

This is where the problem started because rather then a real bus to Krabi we ended up in a minibus (like the big van you take to away games in high school) packed to the brim with backpackers. This was not honest, but at least the ride was OK. The driver was not a maniac, they had DVD movies, and we got the front two seats, which were reasonably comfortable.

My big beef was when we got to Krabi. They drop you off at their little van depot, which is basically just a confined space for accommodation touts to harass you while you try to get your bags off the van. These were Indian style touts as well, very persistent, and honestly a pretty shady crew. The people there also tried not to tell you where you were, so you would not know that you are only .5km from town and do not need their "free" taxi ride. We finally did find out we could walk to town and left.

On the way out I tell the last persistent tout that "I was not going to do any business here". Thais are big about saving face, so you cannot get really mean like in India without people getting upset. However, I thought this was a rather diplomatic way of taking a parting shot before leaving, certainly not telling anyone to "F... Off" or anything like that. Anyway, this greasy slime-bag of a tout follows me for a bit acting all offended and telling me that I better leave quickly. After hearing stories about groups of offended Thais and tourists I decided to walk away, albeit slowly. This last part did not make me any happier about being dropped of in this hornets nest of low life touts however, especially thin skinned ones who evidently cannot be treated with anything but the upmost respect.