Just to let everyone know, I'm still in Thailand. I ate my return ticket and bought a new one for a price that seemed fair but since it was unaccounted for, kinda sucked. So as I type this I have two valid tickets from Thailand to Korea. Anyone wanna ticket from Bangkok to Incheon? Going cheap!
I extended my stay for a week, which was all I could do under the circumstances. And in a week I'll be going to Cambodia. Hopefully... I won't get into that since it's already 5:30 in the morning and I'm supposed to go golfing tomorrow. Another long story. There's all kind of action here.
I had to buy a whole new ticket and then I had to go to Jomtien immigration to extend my visa for 7 days. That's the max. So in 7 days I'll be on the bus to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Closest city to Angkor Wat. I'll stay a couple days and be back in time for a couple more rounds of golf. Then I'll find my way back to Korea on the 6th of August. More expensive than planned but that's cuz I spent my 6 weeks of cash in one month. My fault really.
The bright side is I get to golf St. Andrews and scratch that off my bucket list. AND I finally get to go to Angkor Wat, AND I get to receive my 10th stamp on my passport. 10th different country that is. So I'm looking forward to that.
Right now I'm at the end of celebrating my visa extension. Went to a couple bars tonight with Gordon. Had a whale of a time. There's PLENTY of news with the bar I am staying at. I'm sure I'll have something to say about that in a future post. Drugs, ammunition, firearms... I'll leave you in suspense for now.
I won't get into the details of the struggle I went thru to get all the paperwork done for my trip. It might frustrate you as much as it did me. Suffice to say it took two full days to do something it should have taken an afternoon to do.
But I've paid for the NEW ticket home and the next two weeks lodging. I hope both pan out. There IS some doubt though. I don't even know if Gord will be the primary owner of the Fairway Bar where I'm staying come tomorrow. He's talking about selling or getting a partner and there are people looking at just stepping in and sort of forcefully taking over as his partner. It'd be the best thing for him I think.
But just tonight he was saying that if he doesn't have a good meeting with his lawyer tomorrow he might have to depend on me to give him 20,000 baht. For bail or some damn thing. I don't know if I know him well enough. In fact I think I know him TOO well. If you know what I'm saying. But I think things will work out for the better. Hoping anyhoo....
As for my vacation, much more golf and I WILL be making a trip to the Crocodile Park again. Pictures are coming soon. I'm sure I'll find some more touristy things to do. The bars are wearing a little thin. Not interested in the same old thing every night. Although I DID have a good time tonight in a new bar that played old rock music. That'll always get me drinking. And, hence, I'm drunk at the moment.
Which might be why I used "and" and "hence" back to back. But every day here I thank my lucky stars that I'm where I am. I've never felt so privileged. Money talks folks. Just go to a poor country and you'll find that out. Even though I don't have a lot by most western standards, I'm a rich man here. And THAT has its advantages.
Although I am one of the few who has earned every dollar that's passed through my hands as a dollar or a baht. For example, I just finished eating a Big Mac set that I ordered with a friend named Jeff while we were chatting at a bar. The bike driver went to Mcdonald's and bought it for us and brought it back. It was dirt cheap but the bike driver and the Mcdonald's clerk were both satisfied with the little money paid. To give you an idea, 100 baht is like $3.30. Not bad eh? And I still have fries to gnaw on in my drunken stupor as I watch the TV trying to get to sleep tonight. It's almost 6 and I have to get up for golf at 8. I don't know if I'll make it or not this time. It's not with the Fairway bar though. If it were I'd be home sleeping soundly by now. We were supposed to go to St. Andrews today but only me and Larry signed up so it was cancelled.
Fortunately Larry knew another club that was going to St. Andrews on Saturday so he signed us both up. And for a much cheaper price. Should be fun!
Well the sun is coming up. I think I had better skeedaddle.
See you all later.
Oh and p.s. this is the first vacation for me EVER where I didn't get sick from the new climate or water or whatever causes it. Call it Bali Belly or Montezuma's revenge or whatever, I get it EVERY time! Not this time. I've been out every single night for a month. Which is why I'm way over budget. Hangovers have that added bonus of being a cheap day of suffering alone in my hotel room. Haven't had one of those yet! And I really don't want one. But I'm banking on it happening in Cambodia.
I'll keep you posted.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
UNIQUE TRAVEL SUCKS!
Well I promised to post some pics here but I forgot my little plug that hooks my camera to the usb port. So you will have to wait till I get home to Korea. But that won't be as long a wait as expected. I've already made this trip into a par-for-the-course Davesque travel adventure. Let me splain...
It started early. I wasn't even out of Korea before the shenanigans began again. I had just checked in and took my golf bag to the oversized bag area. Right beside it is a money change area. Since I had arranged for a taxi to take me directly to Pattaya instead of staying on Kao San Rd. in Bangkok then taking a bus the next day to Pattaya as I usually do, I decided to get some Thai money so I could pay the taxi driver. I pushed my luggage cart to the window, (it now had no oversized luggage in it but in the basket by the handle were my passport and my book and pen that I use to take down important info).
I get to the girl at the counter and gave her 100 US dollars and asked for Thai baht. She gives me a snobbish look and says, "Don't you have any Korean money?" What the hell is THAT? I mean REALLY!! She made me glad I was leaving the country. So I just looked at her and said something like, "Just do your fucking job and quit being such an assclown." or some polite equivalent to it. It took her no longer than a few minutes to change the money. While she did so somebody took my cart from right behind me! I turned around and my cart, (with my passport in it remember), was gone.
So I turn back around and ask the bitch if she had seen who took it. She, (of course), asks if I was sure I had a cart. More accurately she told me I hadn't. So I said I had a cart. But she insisted I was too stupid to know what I had just done 5 minutes earlier. So I asked the other three people at the money exchange windows, none of whom were busy when I made my transaction, if THEY had seen who swiped my cart. It was a case of Korean "jung". Some Korean had done it so none of them were going to roll over on him in order to help out the foreigner. Need I say, the now DESPERATE foreigner. They all acted like they hadn't seen a thing. Even agreed with the bitch that I had never had a cart. So I say, loudly, "I HAD a cart and the longer you spend telling me I didn't the farther away my passport gets!" Now other people were starting to stare at me.
I go back to the oversized luggage area and ask the girl there if she'd seen anything. Nope. So I ask the bitch from the exchange counter to call security. She gives me the helpless look like the Incheon National Airport doesn't have any security. So finally I was causing enough of a buzz that someone who had located my passport came to me and told me it was at the check-in counter. Someone had just taken the cart without realizing it had something in it, checked in and returned my passport and book to the check-in agent.
So I go to the check-in counter and ask the girl there how it happened. Who took my cart? She won't say a thing to betray her fellow countriman. She just smiled and laughed nervously in order to protect the fucking jackass. How can Korea ever develop as long as this spineless behaviour continues? Really frustrating!
Anyway, I'm now in Thailand and I've been enjoying myself immensely! I've golfed about 10 times now and it's been awesome! Last time out Scott, (one of the guys who golfs out of the Fairway bar, (where I'm staying)), got a 69. That's -3!!! He got 5 pars and 4 birdies on the back nine! That's some nice golfin! I STILL haven't made it to Cambodia. I had planned on going last weekend but it was some Thai vacation that equates to a sort of Thai lent. I guess they give stuff up and go to the temple and pay the monk to pray for them. To show you that things are tough in Thailand too I'll tell you a local news story. One Thai man went to the temple for Thai lent and asked a monk for a prayer. He handed the monk a 1000 baht bill and asked him for change. The monk pulled out a bag of cash and gave the man change. Then when the monk closed his eyes to pray the man grabbed the bag of cash and ran off. So much for HIS chances at enlightenment!
I bought a bus ticket to Siem Reap, the town closest to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I was supposed to go today. So I decided to get my plane ticket and my visa extended so I could have more time here AND more time in Cambodia. I don't work till the last week of August. When I bought my plane ticket I asked to come back in the first week of August but the guy at UNIQUE TRAVEL in I Tae Won, told me he'd give me a ticket for a month to coincide with the automatic one-month visa you get here as a visitor, then I could extend my ticket after I get to Thailand. I've done that before in Thailand and the Philippines. It's never been a problem. UNTIL NOW!
I went to a travel agency a few days ago to extend my ticket and they didn't allow me entry. I went to another one and they told me it was yet anOTHER Thai holiday so they couldn't do it. So the next day after golf I went to do it. She said okay I could extend until August 6th but had to get an early morning flight. That's not good for me so I asked about Aug. 5th and 4th. Then she tells me it's impossible to extend the ticket. This all took about an hour. Her English wasn't so good so I couldn't establish the reason why she had changed her tune. But I figured I'd go to the place where I'd bought my Cambodia ticket and see if THEY could do it. The guy there said it would be no problem. And if he could I'd pay him 200 baht. So another hour goes by while I'm waiting for him to take down the particulars and make phone calls to the airline. He then tells me he can't do it because the Korean office wasn't open. I'd have to wait till the next day. Which is today. The day I was supposed to go to Cambodia.
SOoooo I ask him to give me my money back for the Cambodia ticket. He tells me he can make it an open ticket. Then I can just tell them when I want to go. That sounds good to me. So today at about 5 o'clock I get a call from them and they say the ticket is ready. I go there and the girl tells me I can't get the ticket extended because it was a promotional deal and the tickets are good for a month and can't be extended.
If you remember the asshole at UNIQUE TRAVEL in I Tae Won had not only elected not to inform me of that but had told me there wouldn't be a problem extending the ticket. And who the hell can stop him? Thai air? Nope. I phoned them today and they told me that if I had bought the ticket directly from them it would have been printed on the ticket. There's nothing they can do about dishonest travel agents. They suggested I take it up with the good people of UNIQUE TRAVEL in I Tae Won.
The whole travel industry! They've really got us all by the balls! They get away with all kinds of shit like this that really should be illegal.
So now my options are to go back after only a month, (which hasn't been long enough), using the original ticket, or to buy a new one-way ticket, (which will be DOUBLE the price of the original). And if I DO that, Thai air will just sell my seat to ANOTHER person, probably at a jacked up rate and make a whole pile of extra money. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is no WAY these lying bastards at the airlines of the world are losing money and I feel exactly NO sympathy for them if they really are.
I haven't decided what I'll do yet but it looks very much right now like I'll be going home before I wanted to and before I am able to make it to Angkor Wat. AGAIN I'm going to probably miss my chance to get there! I wanted to go last time I was here but didn't make it for different reasons. What a massive downer!
P.S. Don't buy any tickets from Unique Travel in I Tae Won.
It started early. I wasn't even out of Korea before the shenanigans began again. I had just checked in and took my golf bag to the oversized bag area. Right beside it is a money change area. Since I had arranged for a taxi to take me directly to Pattaya instead of staying on Kao San Rd. in Bangkok then taking a bus the next day to Pattaya as I usually do, I decided to get some Thai money so I could pay the taxi driver. I pushed my luggage cart to the window, (it now had no oversized luggage in it but in the basket by the handle were my passport and my book and pen that I use to take down important info).
I get to the girl at the counter and gave her 100 US dollars and asked for Thai baht. She gives me a snobbish look and says, "Don't you have any Korean money?" What the hell is THAT? I mean REALLY!! She made me glad I was leaving the country. So I just looked at her and said something like, "Just do your fucking job and quit being such an assclown." or some polite equivalent to it. It took her no longer than a few minutes to change the money. While she did so somebody took my cart from right behind me! I turned around and my cart, (with my passport in it remember), was gone.
So I turn back around and ask the bitch if she had seen who took it. She, (of course), asks if I was sure I had a cart. More accurately she told me I hadn't. So I said I had a cart. But she insisted I was too stupid to know what I had just done 5 minutes earlier. So I asked the other three people at the money exchange windows, none of whom were busy when I made my transaction, if THEY had seen who swiped my cart. It was a case of Korean "jung". Some Korean had done it so none of them were going to roll over on him in order to help out the foreigner. Need I say, the now DESPERATE foreigner. They all acted like they hadn't seen a thing. Even agreed with the bitch that I had never had a cart. So I say, loudly, "I HAD a cart and the longer you spend telling me I didn't the farther away my passport gets!" Now other people were starting to stare at me.
I go back to the oversized luggage area and ask the girl there if she'd seen anything. Nope. So I ask the bitch from the exchange counter to call security. She gives me the helpless look like the Incheon National Airport doesn't have any security. So finally I was causing enough of a buzz that someone who had located my passport came to me and told me it was at the check-in counter. Someone had just taken the cart without realizing it had something in it, checked in and returned my passport and book to the check-in agent.
So I go to the check-in counter and ask the girl there how it happened. Who took my cart? She won't say a thing to betray her fellow countriman. She just smiled and laughed nervously in order to protect the fucking jackass. How can Korea ever develop as long as this spineless behaviour continues? Really frustrating!
Anyway, I'm now in Thailand and I've been enjoying myself immensely! I've golfed about 10 times now and it's been awesome! Last time out Scott, (one of the guys who golfs out of the Fairway bar, (where I'm staying)), got a 69. That's -3!!! He got 5 pars and 4 birdies on the back nine! That's some nice golfin! I STILL haven't made it to Cambodia. I had planned on going last weekend but it was some Thai vacation that equates to a sort of Thai lent. I guess they give stuff up and go to the temple and pay the monk to pray for them. To show you that things are tough in Thailand too I'll tell you a local news story. One Thai man went to the temple for Thai lent and asked a monk for a prayer. He handed the monk a 1000 baht bill and asked him for change. The monk pulled out a bag of cash and gave the man change. Then when the monk closed his eyes to pray the man grabbed the bag of cash and ran off. So much for HIS chances at enlightenment!
I bought a bus ticket to Siem Reap, the town closest to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I was supposed to go today. So I decided to get my plane ticket and my visa extended so I could have more time here AND more time in Cambodia. I don't work till the last week of August. When I bought my plane ticket I asked to come back in the first week of August but the guy at UNIQUE TRAVEL in I Tae Won, told me he'd give me a ticket for a month to coincide with the automatic one-month visa you get here as a visitor, then I could extend my ticket after I get to Thailand. I've done that before in Thailand and the Philippines. It's never been a problem. UNTIL NOW!
I went to a travel agency a few days ago to extend my ticket and they didn't allow me entry. I went to another one and they told me it was yet anOTHER Thai holiday so they couldn't do it. So the next day after golf I went to do it. She said okay I could extend until August 6th but had to get an early morning flight. That's not good for me so I asked about Aug. 5th and 4th. Then she tells me it's impossible to extend the ticket. This all took about an hour. Her English wasn't so good so I couldn't establish the reason why she had changed her tune. But I figured I'd go to the place where I'd bought my Cambodia ticket and see if THEY could do it. The guy there said it would be no problem. And if he could I'd pay him 200 baht. So another hour goes by while I'm waiting for him to take down the particulars and make phone calls to the airline. He then tells me he can't do it because the Korean office wasn't open. I'd have to wait till the next day. Which is today. The day I was supposed to go to Cambodia.
SOoooo I ask him to give me my money back for the Cambodia ticket. He tells me he can make it an open ticket. Then I can just tell them when I want to go. That sounds good to me. So today at about 5 o'clock I get a call from them and they say the ticket is ready. I go there and the girl tells me I can't get the ticket extended because it was a promotional deal and the tickets are good for a month and can't be extended.
If you remember the asshole at UNIQUE TRAVEL in I Tae Won had not only elected not to inform me of that but had told me there wouldn't be a problem extending the ticket. And who the hell can stop him? Thai air? Nope. I phoned them today and they told me that if I had bought the ticket directly from them it would have been printed on the ticket. There's nothing they can do about dishonest travel agents. They suggested I take it up with the good people of UNIQUE TRAVEL in I Tae Won.
The whole travel industry! They've really got us all by the balls! They get away with all kinds of shit like this that really should be illegal.
So now my options are to go back after only a month, (which hasn't been long enough), using the original ticket, or to buy a new one-way ticket, (which will be DOUBLE the price of the original). And if I DO that, Thai air will just sell my seat to ANOTHER person, probably at a jacked up rate and make a whole pile of extra money. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is no WAY these lying bastards at the airlines of the world are losing money and I feel exactly NO sympathy for them if they really are.
I haven't decided what I'll do yet but it looks very much right now like I'll be going home before I wanted to and before I am able to make it to Angkor Wat. AGAIN I'm going to probably miss my chance to get there! I wanted to go last time I was here but didn't make it for different reasons. What a massive downer!
P.S. Don't buy any tickets from Unique Travel in I Tae Won.
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