confused

today i decided to go to kho phiphi, a small island off the coast of phuket. according to my guidebook i needed to go to the pier in krabi to take the ferry there. so i catch the first taxi i see and ask them to take me to the boat to kho phi phi. there’s like 4 people driving the taxi, and only one of them barely speaks english. there seems to be some serious confusion when i tell them where i want to go, but finally we’re off. we end up in some totally random place where some other people tell us we can not rent a boat there. then the taxi driver tells me they can take me to krabi… but only for 1000B (25$) huh?

finally i figure out what the deal is. krabi is not the region that i’m in as i thought… it’s actually a completely different city about 75 miles away from phang-nga. now i’m at a loss as to what to do and have no idea how much it would cost to go there other than this taxi. so i ask them to take me for 800B and they agree. now, 20$ may not seem like a lot of money for a 75 mile cab ride, but here that is an insane amount of money. so as we’re driving i look in my guidebook… and realize that there are buses that go from phang-nga to krabi for only 36B (95 cents).CRAP. so i try to explain to the taxi person that now i dont want to go to krabi, and that i want them to take me back to town. of course, due to the english barrier, my message does not get across.

so now we’re off to krabi. this whole family is in the cab (the driver is the dad, and there’s 3 other kids), and then we stop to go pick up the mom from an illegal gambling casino. so, i definitely felt like i had wasted a lot of money, but the cab ride was kind of fun, with the one english speaking girl trying to show me the sights along the way. she even gave me a good luck charm and we toured the tiger temple on the way.

now i’m in krabi. i went to a night market here and decided i’d buy some lychee fruit. i didn’t really know how much half a kilo of fruit would be, so now i have TONS of fruit. what am i gonna do w/ it all?

so basically, my day has been filled w/ mistakes, misunderstandings, and mishaps. yet, it’s definitely all been an adventure. luckily, thailand is so cheap that even though i wasted money on the taxi ride, and on the fruit, really i only lost $20.25 altogether.

oh yeah. did i mention that thailand bootlegs tons of movies illegally? right now i’m watching “two towers” in the internet cafe as i type this.

-v