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Bangkok Trip #2

Most of the hotels in Bangkok print its address and map in a small card for their customers. It is very useful especially for those who do not speak Thai like us. Every time we went back to hotel, we would show this card to taxi driver. The 1st & 2nd day, we did not get any problem to get back to our hotel, but the spell were broken on the 3rd day after we met up our friend in city centre.

That day after the 2 hours message, it was 12 midnight. We accompanied our friend to her hotel (Holiday Inn), and from there we took taxi to go back to our hotel.

When my friend asked the taxi driver if he knew our hotel The Bangkok Suite City, he said yes. The terrible thing was happened. When the taxi drove around the city, I found out it was not the way we went back to our hotel as usual. Just at the moment, I mentioned to my friend. I also noticed that the picture of the ID card in the taxi is not the person who drove the taxi. Both of us alerted it, and asked the driver if he knew the way to our hotel, the driver insisted he knew the way. When he stopped in front of The Bangkok City (a four five-star hotel), we told him it was not the place. He then drove away and said he knew he knew. He drove to somewhere again. Both of us thought he knew the way and would drove us to the correct hotel. We were too silly to think that when he stopped in front The Bangkok Palace (another four five-star hotel).

We did not trust this driver again, so my friend got off to ask another taxi driver which just stopped in front that hotel. She asked me to stay in. Oh come on, it's very dangerous to stay in the taxi. Of course I did not stay. I quickly got off from the taxi and did not pay him.

When we showed the hotel map/address card to the 2nd taxi driver. He also said that he knew it. Since the time was 1230am, we had no choice but had to trust this drive again. We got on, the driver drove us to somewhere which the location is very nearby to our hotel. Unfortunately, we were unlucky (very 'sui')on that night, when the driver stopped in front of a hotel, he told us the way was one-way, he asked us to walked back. Really 'sui'! Luckily he stopped us in front a hotel. We got the help from the receptionist of that hotel, asked him to help us to translate to the 3rd taxi driver, hopefully the 3rd driver could help us.

The 3rd driver said yes. We asked the driver again, he seem a bit 'blur' and said he knew it. We got off and asked him the fare, he told us was 10x of our normal fare. We were not confidence on this driver, and decided to get another driver, better he drove us to somewhere else.

We walked back to the hotel, and asked a taxi driver to help us. This taxi driver got passagers, so he explained to another taxi driver to send us to our hotel. So have a guess, what happened?

You might not believe that. We were sent to the 1st wrong hotel The Bangkok City. The worst thing was my friend could not find the address card which we tried to show it again to the driver. Finally we decided to ask the driver to send us to Holiday Inn. It was better than we were in somewhere we do not know.

In Holiday Inn's lobby, my friend looked for the address card in her purse and handbag but failed. So we took out the map (luckily our hotel's location is in that map) and tried to show to taxi driver. The problem was none driver 100% could confirm that they knew the location.

At that time, a Holiday Inn's car jokey came and gave us a hand. After he knew where we wanted go, he translated to the driver. We trusted him when he said "trust me, I am professional" somemore, he left his contact number to us just in case we got lost again.

Normal 10 mins drive, now became an hour to reach hotel, and we had to take 4 taxi. Anyway we reached there lastly, if not really could not imagine what would happen then.

From this case, I concluded few important messages,
1. There are a lot of the hotels with the name Bangkok in Bangkok city centre. If you are not staying in a well known hotels (4-star above), normally they do not know the exactly locations of your hotels.

2. Most of night shift the taxi drivers seem took pill, of course we could not prove it, but during the incident 3 out 4 were hiper-active, self talking, look excited...

3. We think most of the night-shift taxi drivers are part-timer, they are not familiar all the direction of Bangkok city. (We did not get any problem when we got back hotel in day time.)

4. If really could not get the way back, go to well-known hotels to get the help from them, they are professional. (At least, the car jokey has proved to us he is)

评论

xienler说…
真的很恐怖也...
如果是我, 早就慌了..
幸好你有朋友陪伴..
也幸好你们都是机警型的~

阿鱼
(嘻嘻~别穿我煲.. 这是我在网络世界的代号~)
siewchow说…
I prefer watch it than I'm the one who act it

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