Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

In case you haven’t gathered Thailand was not my favourite country. To be fair, we only saw a very small portion and it poured for almost our entire stay. That being said I think the surrounding countries are much more appealing.

Things went sour for us almost immediately after crossing the border into Thailand. We had booked an AC bus to make the trip from Siem Reap to Bangkok. On the Cambodian side this is what we got. On the Thai side we were left at the border for almost an hour then driven to a restaurant on the back of a pickup truck and told two hours later that we would actually be taking a minivan which had no room for our luggage as the bus had broken down.

I think the hardest part aside from the rain for me was how expensive Thailand is, relatively speaking of course. When compared to any of the other countries we’ve been our hotels were dives. For the same amount of money we had been getting AC, cable TV, hot water and usually a computer in the lobby and some shampoo, fresh towels and toothpaste in the bathroom. Now we were getting none of these things. It wasn’t just the hotel bills that were more expensive either. The food, clothes and drinks too.

The final straw for me came leaving Koh Yao Noi. I was already disappointed at having spent more money than I had bargained for and not getting the vacation on the beach I had wanted. Dual pricing is alive and well in Thailand and we didn’t escape it. The ferry from KYN to Krabi was 240 Baht we paid with a 500 and Jacob had to chase down the attendant to get our change. He was perfectly comfortable pocketing it hoping that we wouldn’t know the actual price.

We had read that it should cost about 40 Baht per person to take a taxi (which is actually benches on the back of a pickup truck) from the pier to the town. Just to make sure though I asked the driver before hopping on. He responded with 100 Baht a head. I then asked one of the Thai women also on the taxi how much it was to see if there was any room to barter. She talked to the driver for us and found out the price. Turns out the local price is 40 the farang (foreigner) price is 100.

While I’m aware this is all about a few dollars, it bothers me that they feel entitled to more money. They haven’t provided me with a different or better service and often I’m not getting anywhere near the value for my coin. There are no bones about ripping the tourists off because they know there’s not much we can do about it.

I enjoyed our time in Thailand but I can safely say I won’t be rushing back anytime soon. It just isn’t worth it.