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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Scratch cards, Lies & Marooned Kayaks!!


Whilst waiting for Rachel to arrive from the airport in Phuket, miss Alex and I decided we’d go for some breakfast. As we took our chance crossing the road (that’s a whole blog in itself) a bike pulled up with 2 men on. The driver was a South African and the second man was a Thai. The South African introduced himself as Sean and reached into his satchel. He pulled out a piece of card. Me and Miss Alex looked at each other not knowing what was happening. I thought he might ask us for directions. He quickly said that he was working for a promotion company in Phuket and due to tourism “being at an all time low in Thailand” the company were handing out scratch cards with prizes. Most prizes were T Shirts and Baseball caps. As miss Alex scratched her card she had won a T shirt with the name of a Hotel emblazoned on the front (Great!!) I scratched to reveal 3 stars. Sean the South African looked at the card an shouted “oh f@*k, this is amazing.” He then turned the scratch card over and there where 6 star prizes. A Dream Holiday, an iphone 4, an Ipad2, plasma TV, that would be hilarious strapping that to my back pack and taking through customs. 20,000 baht (£400 ish) and something else which we cant remember so it couldn’t have been that good. Straight away we wanted the money, no questions asked that’s what we wanted. All we had to do to was go and collect the prize from the hotel that day. As we were waiting for Rachael we asked Sean if we could go later when she arrived. He said she could come as well as long as she was family. So at that point Rachel and miss Alex were sisters. Sean then told us to collect the prize we would need to sit through a 90 minute presentation and answer a few questions. I was now 30 years old and not 29, and me and miss Alex had lived together for 3 years plus we were on a 3 week holiday in Thailand and not travellers. To get to the hotel the all we had to do was show the card to a tuc tuc driver and he would take us for free of charge, we would also get a free tuc tuc back to where we came from this all seemed too good to be true and too easy but we were really excited and I’d never ever won anything in my life so I was sold.
So the 3 of us arrived at the Patong Beach Resort Hotel and went to the receptionist who told us to take a seat. An English bloke came over and introduced himself as Keith and he sat down and started asking us questions. Bearing in mind before we got there miss Alex and me had run through the story of us “living together for 3 years”, I even told miss Alex to play along with us being engaged just incase we won the dream holiday, my thinking was that we’d be upgraded to a better suite. Rachel was also clued up on the story, I thought it was water tight. Keith asked us straight away how long where we in Thailand? At the same time I said 3 weeks and miss Alex said 2, mistake number 1!! He then asked when did we get here? Miss Alex saying 2 weeks to the previous question  completely threw me with the dates in my head, and I  said just after new year, then I noticed as I said this I still had my new years wrist band on from the full moon party in day glow green. At this point we knew Keith was quizzing us for any excuse not to give us a prize, we still didn’t know what the prize was yet. There was another scratch box on the scratch card that had a letter corresponding to the prizes on the back. Rachel and I tried to make conversation with Keith, thinking we were getting his attention away from the lies we had told him. Small talk like “how long have you lived in Thailand?” Miss Alex had the look of guilt on her face, it was written all over her. She made an excuse and went to the toilet. Keith then left us to attend to a guest. We were rumbled when he returned he gave a really weak apology and said that he was really busy and had no time in the day to give us the 90 minute presentation that was required before I could claim my prize. I wasn’t happy with this and said to Keith that we had won fairly and it wasn’t our fault they were so busy. I wasn’t giving up on my prize too easy, miss Alex was shushing me and getting embarrassed with my arguing with Keith. Rachael was nodding agreeing with every word I said. I was not leaving without a fight. Keith looked really annoyed at this point and said he’d see what he could do for us and walked away. I was convinced he’d come back with 3 baseball caps, if he did I would have used them like the character Odd Job did in the James Bond film and taken his head off with them. Miss Alex spotted Keith in the distance and he didn’t look too happy shaking his head, he just wanted us out and away from the hotel. This was the last we’d see of him but the hotel receptionist came and sat with us after a couple of minutes and asked me to scratch the card to reveal my winning prize. I’m such a mug because I still actually thought, even at this point that I may have a shout for the 20,000 baht!! It revealed the dream holiday. That is what this was all about, it was the hotel wanting to sell time shares, nothing to do with poor tourism in Thailand. The 90 minutes was an advertisement. The receptionist then opened up a brochure of different locations we could use our free week in the sun. Bali being one of them, who in there right mind would go to Bali for 7 days? Apparently miss Alex and me have 1 year to claim the prize, but I reckon our details will be “lost” if we did claim it. Even had to ask for our taxi back to our guesthouse, and got told to wait “10 minutes” at the front of the hotel. We made our own way back and walked. Miss Alex felt ashamed and felt we’d committed the deadliest of sins that afternoon. I however know that if I ever raided a bank, miss Alex will not be my partner in crime.

As Miss Alex’s previous blog said we drowned our sorrows that night and got pretty drunk. We didn’t realise how big the prostitute and lady boy scene was in Phuket. One lady boy decided it would be hilarious to spank me several times.

We’ve come back to Phi Phi now with Rachel. The 2 Sams and Catriona are also here. After a big night out, (wouldn’t expect anything less from our gang) we battled the hangovers and went kayaking yesterday. To start with our kayak kept veering off to the right, We looked like a one legged duck doing circles. Once we sorted out the steering we headed to Monkey bay and a tiny beach across the bay. On the way back miss Alex was sat at the front, so I assume this puts her in charge of the directions. She failed to notice a single rock in the middle of the huge bay sticking out from the water. Next thing we were marooned on the rock. The Kayak was stuck. I really thought about getting out and pushing it off but then I had to swim miles back to shore. Luckily after a few minutes we managed to shimmy the kayak off the rock. So not only I miss Alex not my partner in crime, she will not be the get away driver either!!

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