First, we traveled in a tour package. This means we were with a group of people. The type we had was free and easy. This means that there are only a few group activities, and the rest you can do what you want.
I have some issues with the tour however free and easy it was meant to be:
The bus was late to pick us up. We waited outside for quite a long time, in the dark early morning.
The bus was not in the best condition. One of our seats was broken, the overhead compartments barely stayed shut or even on their hinges and the A/C was leaking water onto some of the seats.
The tour lead was supposed to have filled out, correctly, all of the forms needed to enter Thailand. She did not fill mine out correctly. Instead of correctly filling one out and giving it to us, she handed us a blank form to fill out on our own.
Entry to Thailand was a mess. Instead of informing everyone that we needed to go through one gateway as they had all of our names on a list so we wouldn't have to pay customs, they let us all go however we wanted. Then they informed us, after a couple of people paid the fee, that we do not need to.
The tour guide, Fatty, talked without pause about prostitutes instead of about things in the area that might have been interesting. He also speaks with horribly confused Chinese (uses many dialects mixed) that my family found hard to understand. I just thought that he was annoying to listen to, since I don't understand enough Chinese to get out of a wet paper bag, yet.
When we arrived in Thailand we had an arranged meal. The food wasn't very good, and the rice was hard. One guy at our table, from the tour group, was a nasty fellow. He ate everything he could grab, without considering others at all.
When we arrived at the hotel, after listening to more prostitute information from Fatty, we were herded off of the bus without being told anything about when/where/how we'd have the hotel breakfast, what things are around the area, where to eat, etc..
We had a nice time on our own shopping in the street market that was setup for New Year's celebration. Siew bought a few things: 2 watches and 2 pair of shoes. I got a pair of shorts.
The next day we hired a Tuk-Tuk to take us around. This picture is not exactly ours' but close to what it looks like on the outside. We took a trip around the peninsula on the Tuk-Tuk. The first stop we made was just a bit of bad timing as it started raining, HARD. We took shelter under a structure along with quite a few other people. One Thai man was selling hard boiled eggs that were warm and tasty.
This is us inside our tuk-tuk:
We made our way to where the Tuk-Tuk was, got soaking wet, got back into the Tuk-Tuk and continued on our cold way.
We then went to an aquarium and watched them feed some small sharks and large rays. The giant groupers scared Huey. She was making faces at one and it jumped at her. They weigh as much or more than me!
We then ate at a place the driver recommended. It was ok. The rice was hard. heir cats were cute though.
We got back and showered.
Siew and I slept early. In the morning we shopped a little but didn't get anything.
We then had lunch and tour functions.
Floating markets are famous in Bangkok. Hatyai tried to make its own. It wasn't very nice. i got a large mug to drink from there though, which is nice for a fat guy like me.
After that was a lantern festival. It was pretty neat, except where the tour lead and guides were involved. Fatty told us 1 hour, then 45 minutes and finally he gave us 30 minutes. We took our time and had fun exploring the different lanterns.
The lanterns were neat.
We got back to the bus and got in. I'm not sure if anyone complained, we took longer than 30 minutes and were last to the bus. I don't care. Fuck them all.
The tour lead had her daughter with her and seemed only interested in shopping, rather than performing what she was being paid to do! There were a few people on the bus who apparently are friends with the tour lead. She gave them a lot of attention and allowed them to take up more seats than they needed. This caused a problem when another person joined the tour later, apparently he had arrived in Hatyai earlier.
The last seat in the back of the bus has enough room for 5 people. Our group was 6. We could have taken that and one extra seat and been able to sit as a group.
Instead the tour lead's friends, 3 of them, took up the entire back to themselves. Even when seats were discovered to be wet from the A/C no one was asked to move in order to make better use of the seats. In fact NOTHING was done about the wet seats. Huey ended up using a cardboard box to keep her butt dry.
We spent part of the last morning shopping for clothes for the girls. Siew got two dresses that look very nice. :-)
When we were leaving the next day to return the hotel lobby was a disaster area. Instead of keeping the group together and communicating, see a pattern to this yet?, with her group, the lead let everyone go wherever and do whatever so things were not organized at all.
When we left we went to eat. However, instead of going somewhere different, we went to the same place we first ate at! We sat with the same people and the greedy one was even worse this time around. He ate more of the meat they brought out than any of the other 8 people at the table. He took too much for us to get more than a bite, A BITE!, each.
Fatty and the lead helped serve food for some reason. The lead's table had extra food, and got it before anyone else got any food as well. This is the same table that her daughter was sitting at. Her daughter is NOT a child, just so you know.
When we were leaving, the tour lead did not give me, or have prepared, a re-entry form for Malaysia. She told us 3 times that she had the form! When she was asked the final time she said that we had to get it from the customs officers! She was supposed to have that ready for me. She fucking lied to Siew!
So, I went without it. I had to wait in line a long time to get the form, there were none at the box before the line where there should have been. I got the form and filled it out, got through customs and found I'd held the bus up, last again!
The order that they dropped us off from the bus was different from the order that they picked us up, which was wrong to start.
All of the parts of our trip that didn't involve the actual tour were much much better than ANY of the parts that involved the tour!
Oh, the hotel had a bath tub and I was able to take a bath. I like baths.
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