After just a day in Bangkok, we decided to go to the southern islands and have a short break on some of the beaches. We went to a travel agents and booked a bus and boat to Koh Samui. The bus wasn’t until the evening so we decided to have a walk about and see what else Koh San road had to offer..
Walking through Bangkok you quickly get accustomed to the tuk tuk and taxi drivers plying their trade - You learn to ignore the incessant beeps of their horns and the yells of “taxi” One tuk tuk driver came up to us and said he’d give us a tour of the city for an hour for just 5 baht! This is about 8 pence. We were a bit dubious but said ok and sure enough we did get our cheap tour… at a price! It turns out that the government subsidises tuk tuk drivers with petrol tokens to get them to take tourists away from Koh san road and into shops with a better quality of merchandise. It seems that the government gets a lot of complaints from travellers that they’re sold counterfeit merchandise and expensive clothing like tailor made suits that fall apart after about a week.
We saw a few temples first and then we went to a couple of suit shops so the tuk tuk driver could get his tokens. It’s so embarassing going into these shops when several tailors come around you and try and get you to buy a suit which after a lot of umming and ahhing you say you’re not interested!
After the tuk tuk ride we went to a TAT office which was recommended to us by a thai architect who we spoke to. He told us that all the Thai people get their holidays booked there because it’s so cheap. The guy selling the packages spent about 30 minutes taking us through some great deals which, in hindsight we should have taken. We kept trying to get the prices down until he said how much do you want to pay per day. I said 100 baht at which point he went mad and kicked us out, swearing at us in Thai. oops.
In the evening we caught the bus to Koh Samui which got us to the pier for our boat at 7am the next morning and we arrived off the boat 4pm that day.
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