Tuk tuk

More tales of cheekiness in the effort to turn a buck (or baht)...

So to get in to Patong we booked a taxi from the hotel lobby, expecting quite a wait and for some ricketty old thing to arrive. Within the blink of an eye this sleek black car arrives and to our surprise it's our cab, and let me tell you it's the nicest taxi I've ever been in. The driver took us into Patong for only 300 baht and we agreed for him to come and get us at 1pm, 3 hours later.

So after doing our Patong thing, we head back through the monsoon to our meeting point. 1:10 comes and we're getting a little bored with waiting so we approached a cabbie and asked how much to get to our resort. He said "400 baht." We said no way and walked off. He came chasing after us, callling out "Wait! Wait!" We said, "No, we paid 300 baht to get here in a luxury car with air con." (Tuk tuks, the taxis here, are little vans with no back door and a bench seat on either side on the back) Another cabbie comes rushing up to join the first one and offers to take us there for 280 baht. We're still not interested and these guys are desperate. Fortunately, just at that time our personal driver turns up and we get into his excellent car. He's so excellent he even stops off at 7-11 on the way back so I can buy beer and doesn't charge us any extra! To him I say - "Excelsior!"