Advertisement
Published: July 15th 2009
We were so excited to arrive in Thailand again and just chill on the beach for a while. We left Siam Reap on another 6 hour journey back to Phenom Penh, spent the night there then took 2 flights until we arrived in Koh Samui at about 8 at night. From the get go we had drama! We had arranged to spend 7 days at a self catering apartment on the island so we could make some of our food and feel like we weren't in a hotel for a while. We rented an apartment from this English guy, Jon who, owned the Mosquito Bar pub below the apartments. He was supposed to be at the airport to pick us up and low and behold he wasn't, we waited a while, called him and he said someone would be there shortly...45 miutes later someone from his bar staff came - we were paying 600baht for this by the way.
We arrived at the apartments and were met by bar manager big John, were shown our room and we immediately dissapointed. It didnt look like the pics on the internet, it was small and had no kitchen only a kettle and
View from our new flat
This is a place up the road from the horrible first apartments - we got an amazing deal as it's low seasonfridge. We slumped on the couch and realized our chill out time wasnt about to start just yet. To top it off the bar downstairs was noisy and the bar didnt have a wireless internet signal. The place wasnt cheap either - it was about $40/night.
We decided to check out the next morning and found a really really nice place down the road owned by a man named Mr Zia. We checked in there and Ed phoned Jon to tell him we'd be leaving. Jon and Ed arranged to exchange the money for passports later that night - long story short, pls read the report given to the tourist police and Thailand tourist authority below:
When we arrived at the bar we were presented a bill for 2728 baht. He had charged us for 2 nights for 2228 baht- he claims there was a minumun 2-night stay, which we have never seen or heard before the bill was presented (as well as 500 baht for the airport pickup, which we are not disputing).
We did not feel that this bill was fair as a. he was charging us for a 2 night stay when we only stayed 1 and b. he was using an inflated nightly rate at 1114 baht. We said that we were prepared to offer 2000 baht to cover our 1 night's accomodation, the taxi ride and a bit extra for the inconvenience. John declined that offer and we asked him to meet us the next day in person to discuss the details. He agreed and we left it at that.
We later got a text from him asking for us to return the room keys that night. We replied that we would be happy to return the keys when we got our passports returned and we had settled the bill. After varioustexts back and forth, he texted us saying that our passports would be with the police the next day as he was done speaking to us as we would not pay the bill in full. We told him that involving the police wasn't necessary, but that it was his choice if he felt he needed to involve the police.
We slept on our conversations that night and decided it wasnt worth the hassle and texted him at 9.45am the next morning saying we would pay his 2728 baht bill
in full to settle the matter. He said that it was too late for that and that he would tell us the details of the police officer who would have our passports. We didn't know what else to do so we contacted the Bophut police box, where we had 2 officers accompany us to the Mosquito bar to try to resolve the matter.
Upon arriving we found John there with a young boy he said was an internet specialist so that he could prove to us that wireless networks were available. At this stage he said that while the Mosquito bar doesnt have its own internet connection we could go onto the other surrounding bars connections. We had tried this, but while they are listed as 'open networks' once logged on they required payment.
When he saw we had arrived with local police he asked to speak with them privately, we are unsure what he said.
It was at this stage that John presented us with a new bill for 6700 baht. He said that new expenses had been incurred such as the internet specialist listed above, he claimed he had consulted a lawyer, he charged 1200
baht for a taxi to bring our passports to his home, and additional charges we are still unaware of to bring it to the 6700 baht total.
John said he would accept 5000 baht then and there to make this thing go away, otherwise we would have to pay a lot more in the end as he said we would have to pay off the police. John repeatedly kept saying 'you dont know how things are run here', 'the police are going to believe me not you', 'I will take you to court'. We should mention John has a Thai wife who he said had been speaking with the police for a couple hours already. He intimated that we would also have to pay bribes to the Thai police in order to have our passports returned.
The Bophut police suggested resolving this matter at their station, but John insisted that we go to the Chaweng station where his wife had been all day. The police, who did not speak much English, suggested we do that. We agreed.
We felt felt overwhelmed, intimidated and like this man was determined to use means necessary to get as much money
Running out of gas after 2 minutes
You can buy gas from road side vendors selling it in old water bottles from us as possible. However, we were optimistic that the police would fairly see the situation.
When we arrived at the police station we were immediately confronted by a plain clothes police man shouting at us 'why you dont pay this bill', 'why are you being so much trouble'. This man had been sitting talking with John's wife. We tried to briefly defend our position, then took a seat until our case was to be heard. John continued to say to us settle this with me here and now or you're going to lose more money bribing the police.
We eventually went into the room and met and officer who briefly listened to both of our stories. However, it was obvious that he really didnt care very much about the outcome as he seemed very distracted, took other phone calls and spoke with other officers. John dominated most of the conversation and insisted that he was not going to back down and would have no problem going to court.
At this point we asked John's wife to give our passports to the officer, as legally she could not hold them. She refused and the officer did not
Ed's fish pedicure
the fish eat the dead skin - it looked like something out of a scifi movie force her to either hand them back to us as or take charge of them (aswe understand a private individual cannot hold a passport against that person's will). We felt helpless and like we had no options.
We had no alternative to negotiate with him, and John said he would now accept 5500 baht and not a penny less - we submitted and paid him this money so we could get our passports back.
Needless to say this put a bit of a damper on our stay in the fisherman's village in Koh Samui. Our new accomodation was about 400m from the horrible apartments it was hard to let go of the annoyance of how much money we had to pay this jerk.
On a scooter ride home from the grocery store Kat said to Ed let's just stop at the tourist police one last time and update our report just to get a bit of piece of mind. When we entered the police this time there were 2 volunteer British ladies working there who heard our story and said that there was a film crew on the island from London who were doing a reality piece
on the Thai tourist police and that they should hear our story. We jumped on this opportunity, and before we knew it we were doing some reinactments and sitting down for a formal account of what happened.
The funniest part of this is when the tourist police and the film crew showed up at the Mosquito Bar unannounced to try to get Jon's side of the story - surprisingly Jon didnt want to be interviewed - so the film crew got some lovely shots of the bar. The next day Jon was spitting mad that his bar was being filmed and started raising hell with the local police, tourist police etc - the tourist police said that a lot of British expats come here and set up businesses when they're trying to get away from things back home, well tough luck for Jon this is going to be shown across the whole of the UK - karma's a bitch!
We decided after a week at Mr. Zia's beautiful beach front apartment to move to a different part of the island to get a fresh start. We found an amazing deal at the Samaya Bura hotel in Lamai beach
- $24/night for staying a nice 4* resort. These were low season room prices - you didnt dare use any of the other facilities as everything else was soooo expensive, we learnt that the hard way with laundry.
We spent a week there scooting around town, explore different markets, we tried to go to a waterfall which ended up being a literal rock trickling after a hellish hike, suntanning and making use of the hotel's gym. Ed also found a muay thai studio where he took a class, and in a moment of madness paid some woman with a stall in a shopping centre to have her little fish eat all the dead skin off his feet! Ironically the resort next door was the original detox resort of the one we went to in Chiang Mai - while we passed on the colonics this time around but we had some awesome meals there and a nice massage.
We've also turned a little bit ghetto trying to save money in that if breakfast isnt included we clear out the mini bar fridge and load up on our own groceries! We saw a few other young couples at the resort
doing the same thing at the local grocery store - the hotel market up is around 600% for beer, chocolate etc.
We had originally planned to go to Ko Tao after Samui for a week, but after meeting another couple at the resort's bar one night we have changed our minds and are heading for Ko Phi Phi instead. We started looking at accomodation in Ko Tao and most reasonably priced places are a little dingy, plus with it being low season we didnt want to be on a secluded island in a beach shack for a week. We've both found getting into the 'doing nothing' way of life of the islands a bit challenging after moving around so much - not that we're complaining 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0227s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
