So Jeffrey, our Thai travel agent, set us up for an all-day private tour of the floating markets on Friday, the infamous bridge over the river kwai (sp?) and tiger temple. "Tut-ti" our driver, arrived to pick us up promptly at 7am. I was still finishing up my breakfast which consisted of freshly squeezed orange juice and "coconut pudding", basically these little round balls of dough that are deep fried (so much for my healthy diet) and filled with coconut pudding for 35 B. I was surprised to discover some had corn and peas throughout as well. What is up with that?? Anyway, we loaded our stuff into her taxi and were off...but only for a minute b/c we saw banana leaves on the grill and I hopped out to see...sure enough, it was my favorite breakfast food in Thailand...a sliced banana, rolled in sweet coconut milk sticky rice and then grilled in banana leaves...yum! Back in the cab for the 2 hour drive out to the floating markets...
Tut-ti took us to the boat rental place...I had been to the markets before and this place looked different and was quite secluded from what I had remembered. We were told that it was an astounding 1000B per person to rent a boat...this equates to roughly $30USD. We were confused b/c we thought everything was pre-arranged by Jeffrey, but apparently the boat rental, we were told, was not included in the price we paid. What were we to do? We drove all the way out there just for this...we didn't even have that much B on us! They agreed to accept dollars so we paid in a combination of Thai B and USD and were pretty pissed off. Basically we had no money left after that! We got on the fancy speedboat and our "driver" immediately started pulling over to all the market stalls alongside the river...where we were pestered by the owners to purchase their stuff...even though we kept telling the guy taking us around that we had no money left!
We finally arrived to the real floating market...a colorful, narrow canal where boats filled with tourists and locals alike exchanged various goods...fruits, vegetables, spices, souveniers, even soup in real bowls were passed around! It is such a beautiful sight to see...but unfortunately we weren't in much of a mood to shop after feeling like we'd been ripped off!
We passed another boat boarding station and asked some European tourists what they paid for their boat ride...only 150B!!! That's when Hadas lost it and started screaming at our guy...he looked legitimately scared and pulled over to borrow someone's cell phone to call his manager. We demanded he take us back right away to give us a refund. He agreed and drove us quickly down the winding and narrow canals all the way back...where we were greeted with the young Thai woman at a boat farther away from the boarding dock. She said she would give us our money back as long as we kept quiet and didn't say anything to any of the other tourists. At that moment an enormous tour bus pulled into their parking lot...we agreed and were taken to the stairs to get off our expensive boat. Once the money was in our hands, the manager who barely spoke English somehow knew the expression "Get out". That was the last straw! Of course we immediately warned the other tourists that it was all a scam and if they'd just drive a bit farther down the road they would pay 10 times less than what this place was charging!
We couldn't believe that Tut-ti might be in on it too, but we had to be with her the rest of the day so tried to avoid the topic with her. Our guidebooks warned us about these types of scams in Thailand. I didn't realize how "protected" I was from all this last time when I was here, but now it is all becoming quite evident.
Anyway, she took us to the main area of the floating market where we happily shelled out the 150B to get on a much nicer boat for the tour of the floating market, part 2...which was much more enjoyable. We still didn't end up buying anything, but it was nice to know that we had some money in our pockets if we wanted to :)
Tut-ti then drove us to the bridge over the River Kwai which is apparently the name of a movie that I haven't seen. It was rather anticlimatic. There are train tracks going over the bridge which are known as the "Death Railway" because so many men died during the construction of them during World War I. Anyway, we browsed through the market stalls, picked up more healthy treats...deep fried bananas this time...and then got back in the car for Tiger Temple...
We arrived at Tiger Temple just in time for pictures with tigers! Basically the monks at this temple were given a tiger cub that had been saved from poaching many years ago. They nursed the tiger back to health and from then on opened their doors to more tigers. The area of Thailand where the temple is located is close to the border of Burma. There are apparently tons of tigers in this area and a poacher can earn up to $4500USD, an obscene amount of money in Thailand, for each tiger they catch...the temple is also home to other animals...goats, deer, water buffalo, etc and all have grown up around humans so are very friendly...
We lined up with the rest of the tourists for our turn taking photos with tigers...they had just been fed their regular diet of boiled chicken so were very sleepy. The workers at the temple explained that they always feed the tigers cooked foods so that they won't get "a taste for blood". After taking pictures and getting to pet the adult tigers, we wandered around the other side and got to pet some baby tigers...there was a monk nearby making sure they behaved themselves. For 1500B you could even feed tiger cubs bottles of milk, but we had to get going :( we had a flight to catch and were a good ways off from Bangkok...
Tut-ti drove like a maniac the rest of the way to Bangkok. I feared for my life. Once in Bangkok the traffic was horrendous. We really didn't think we were making it to Chiang Mai! But she came through and got us there 45 minutes before our departure time...only 5 minutes before the closing of the check out counter...
On to Northern Thailand...
No comments:
Post a Comment