Dodgy Brothers

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What can I say! Dodgy Brothers eat your heart out. We had by far the worst tour we have ever been on - Beware of Andaman Safari Far Far Away tours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Their slogan is 'You come We care'. Yeah right and pigs might fly too! I guess I had better fill you in...

We got picked up at 7.45. We were quite excited as we were supposedly going to do some of the things that we really wanted to do. Our guide Nina greeted us and told us that we were the only three on the tour today (warning bells ringing yet????). Apparently she had a busy day yesterday with two mini bus loads of people! She then told us that we could spread out and have a sleep if we wanted as it was a half an hour drive to our first destination. We declined but she promptly laid down and had a little sleep herself.

First stop ...Bang Pae Waterfall, Jungle Walk and Gibbon Project. Sounds pretty cool doesn't it. Wrong!!!! We walked up some steps to the front of the Gibbon Project. Nina announced that we were to wait here as she disappeared to the toilet. One of the workers told us a little bit about the project but said that the walk through part didn't open to 9. Ok we thought - we will have plenty of time later. Nina reappeared and then we went on the jungle walk. The jungle walk was a walk along a path to the waterfall (about a couple of hundred metres.) Nothing too spectacular here. We then headed down the way we had come and were ushered back on to the bus. "What about seeing the Gibbon Project" we asked. We were told that we really didn't have time to wait and they don't open to later. We were told that it was time for a coffee break. Great we thought - we could do with a coffee. We then drove to the World's Biggest Gem factory and told to go inside. We didn't know that this was part of the deal! Once they realised that we weren't going to buy anything they quickly tried to usher us out. I tried to steer us towards the coffee shop (which we probably would have had to pay for) but we were quickly headed off and ushered out side where Nina was waiting for us. She proudly announced that it was time for our elephant ride. We hopped into the bus again and drove for about 20 minutes to the elephants. Everything seemed ok until we started to get into 'country side'. Remember the Royal Show pony rides - this was like that. We rode on the elephant around a clearing before heading back. The baby elephants were cute though and we spent a little bit of time playing with them before the final show stopper of the tour - The nature canoe at Mangrove Forest Place! We nearly died as we were driven to the Mangroves! We were driven to the middle of nowhere, surrounded by piles of rubbish. We took one look at the green river and another look at the inflatable canoe and nearly piked out. Pam and I were game and once we got into the canoe we were fine. We just hoped that nothing floating in the river would puncture the canoe, forcing us into the swamp. We were highly amused to be floating past piles of rubbish, old lounges, bits of rubbish tied to trees, beer glasses floating in the water (just to name a few). We had thoughts of the Anaconda movie as we traveled along. Luckily fits of laughter managed to mask the poor quality of what we were seeing. The only saving grace was that the food was wonderful. The heavens then opened as we travelled back to the hotel about half an hour before our tour was scheduled to finish. While the day was a disaster, we made it as enjoyable as we possibly could.

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