Tuk-tuks and tourists

So, I never really mentioned that I moved to Thailand.  :)  Well, I did.  I’ve been here since January 8^th.  Whit moved with me and we’re having so much fun!  My brother, Brian got off his mission in December and he’s here, too.  The three of us all moved in with my parents and my little sister, Amber.  It’s way fun.  I really wish my sister, Lindsay, and her family could be here, too.  We are having a good time, though.  I’ll try to keep my blog updated with the goings on.  :)

 -------

Sometimes things happen that PROVE to us that we are indeed… stupid.  This happened the first week we were here in Thailand.  Brian, Whitney, and I decided that we wanted to have a nice fun day at The Grand Palace.  The Grand Palace is a bunch of way cool buildings where the royal family used to live and stuff.  Anyway. 

 Whenever a group of us that don’t speak Thai want to go out and do something, we have this little arrangement: Noi (our family’s housekeeper- way cool lady.  We have a lot of fun.) will call us a taxi and explain to them where we are going.  Then when we are ready to come home, we flag down a taxi and show them a piece of paper that we carry that has instructions to our house written in Thai.  Simple.  Works like a charm!

 Noi got us a taxi and we got to the Grand Palace.  We were walking up to what we thought was the entrance and a guy came up to us.  He didn’t speak much English, but he asked us if we needed to buy entrance tickets.  After we told him yes, he pointed and told us we needed to go the other way.  Oh.  Cool.  Thank you, helpful stranger.  We headed out in our new direction in order to buy the tickets we were so excited to get.  Before we could get to the ticket booth, however, someone stopped us and asked us if we were going to buy tickets to go The Grand Palace.  After we told him we were, he informed us that we couldn’t go there now because they were closed for lunch.  DANG.  We were a little disappointed because… well… I guess I don’t need to explain WHY.  I mean, they were closed.  That’s why.  This guy was super nice, though, and asked us if we had seen the giant Buddha.  *Okay.  He didn’t call it the “giant Buddha.”  I can’t remember the real name of it, however, so giant Buddha is all you’re getting. :)*  We didn’t even know what he was talking about, so we told him no.  He explained that there was a huge Buddha statue not too far from The Grand Palace and he said it was way cool and totally worth seeing.  He walked over to the closest tuk-tuk (a really cool taxi-thing.  It looks a lot like this-)

and told him that we’d pay him 20 Baht to take us there and back.  Now… taxis in Thailand are super, super cheap.  As in… 5 bucks will get you almost anywhere.  But 20 Baht (Something like 75 cents) is a STEAL.  We thought it through really quickly and couldn’t think of a downside, so we thanked the man and headed in the tuk-tuk to the giant Buddha.

When we got there, our tuk-tuk driver told us (through broken English and charades) that he would wait for us and that we could take as much time as we wanted (unusual).  We hoped that he was telling the truth and went to see the statue.  

The giant Buddha statue was just that- giant.  It was HUGE.  It was cool to see, and we stayed for a little while.  When we got bored we headed back to see if the tuk-tuk was still there.  It was!  Our driver told us he had to go to the bathroom, but that we should just wait for him at the tuk-tuk.  We climbed inside and were just talking and taking pictures.  RIGHT next to us, there was a man sitting there and he asked if we wanted him to take a picture with all three of us in it.  He spoke English quite well.  He took a couple of pictures and he started telling us about himself.  He told us he was a doctor and that he had been to the states before and… whatever.  He asked us how long we were going to be in Thailand.  After we told him 3 months he asked if we had been

to a travel agency, yet, to help plan the rest of our trip.  We hadn’t been to one, so he told us of the BEST travel agency that could get us good discounted train tickets and could help with all the arrangements and everything.  It was called T.A.T. and was pretty close to the giant Buddha.  We talked about it for a waaaaaay long time, and then finally our driver came back.  The doctor told us that he would tell our driver to take us to T.A.T. instead of back to The Grand Palace.  Uh… no, that’s okay.  We said we’d just go another time.  The doctor then told us that it was fine and that we could just go back to The Grand Palace if we wanted, but that it was closed for a special ceremony and wouldn’t be opened again until 3:00.  It was about 1:30 at this point, so we realized that we might as well head to T.A.T to at least get some brochures about places to travel.  

We got to T.A.T. and they really weren’t a lot of help.  They would have been helpful if we had been willing to commit to finalized travel plans right then.  We got back in the tuk-tuk and said to head back to The Grand Palace.  We figured that even though it wasn’t open yet, we could just wander around the little shops outside of it for a while.

The tuk-tuk takes off, and we drove for quite a while.  We couldn’t remember how far away we had been in the first place, but it seemed like we were going a little far.  Finally we pull into the parking lot of another T.A.T. building.  Uh… hang on.  We really didn’t need to visit another travel agency place.  Our driver shut off the tuk-tuk and turned around and smiled at us.  We told him that we didn’t want to be here and that we just wanted to leave.  He didn’t really understand us… or pretended not to… and we all just sat there sort of awkwardly.  Finally he got the point, but he seemed disappointed.  As we got driving again, he turned around and said, “First you go to Thai fashion.”  We were like… huh??  We kept telling him that we just wanted to go back to The Grand Palace, but he was sooo insistent about the “Thai fashion.”  Finally we figured out he wanted to take us to a tailor’s shop.  Since none of us wanted to have any suits made, we told him no.  He kept begging us to go for 5 minutes.  “Just 5 minute.  Just 5 minute.”  Finally he just admitted what was up.  “Free gas.  Free gas for 5 minute.  Free gas for me.”  Ah.  Suddenly it all made SO MUCH SENSE.  We had just been taken for one heck of a ride!

The tuk-tuk driver got vouchers for free gasoline for every group of people that he took to T.A.T. and this tailor shop.  Everyone that we had talked to that day had been in on it!!  It started way back with the “helpful stranger” that sent us toward the “ticket booth.”  Turns out we were headed the right direction to the ticket booth in the first place!!  He sent us away from it towards the next guy who told us that the Grand Palace was closed for lunch.  The Grand Palace… closed for lunch.  Yeah.  No.  The Grand Palace doesn’t close for luch!  Are you kidding me that we fell for that?!  Then… how nice of him to get us a tuk-tuk for so cheap.  Oh, right.  Tuk-tuk driver: also in on the game.  The nice “doctor” we met, who informed us about T.A.T.  Ha.  E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G was a set up!  As we sat there piecing this all together, we laughed and laughed!  The first guy told us The Grand Palace was closed for lunch while the “doctor” told us it was closed for a “special ceremony.”  Oh, man.  We bought every part of it.  The whole unexpected trip took about an hour and a half.  We finally agreed to go to the “Thai fashion” for 5 minutes.  THEN he took us back to the Grand Palace.  We had a great time at The Grand Palace, and seriously… just laughed the whole rest of the day. 

We were actually way glad that it happened.  We had SO MUCH FUN!   And seriously… we saw so many cool things on that tuk-tuk.  We never would have been able to get a tuk-tuk and say, “uh- just drive around so we can see stuff.  Yeah, drive a lot… don’t know where.  Yeah.”

 

So there you have it.  Three stupid tourists.  Three stupid tourists who had one dang fun day.  :)