So we left the icy cold streets of Melbourne for a humid yet wet Thailand.
We arrived at Phuket on the 22nd, a bit late at night after travelling literally ALL DAY to get there! This included a 4 hour wait in Kuala Lumpur (our favourite place...NOT!) before we could get our next flight, which was delayed by about half an hour, to Phuket.
When we got to Phuket we were instantly approached by a load of taxi drivers wanting our business... and overcharging for it! We told them we didn't have that much money and along came SCAM NUMBER 1.
I love Asia, honestly, but it's full of scams you have to avoid!
Now Scam Number 1 wasn't the kinda scam we'd encountered before, it was a rather cleverly put together scam...
We got into the taxi, apparently the taxi driver knows where we're going...or DOES he? Apparently not, because a few minutes later we're pulling up outside his taxi rank so he can find out what area it is we're staying in.
I'm told to go inside to speak to a lady in there (Tina was her name, Hi Tina!) and give her details of where we're stayin so he knows his way!
So I sat down, a little suspicious of what was awaiting me...Tina, shock horror, brings out a load of brochures for places for us to stay!
THANKS SO MUCH, just what I WANT at 10 o'clock at night!!!!! After such a long day travelling, how did you KNOW I really REALLY wanted to have a DIFFERENT PLACE to where i'm staying sold to me?! Genius!
So I told her no,I want to go where we had planned to stay.I wasn't having any of it!
She rang them up (found their number on the internet!) and left the room to speak to them.
I knew what was coming next...because she couldn't possibly ask them this while being in the same room.
"Maybe they no have room for you tonight...maybe you stay here at this nice place tonight, right in the centre by the beach...best place."
"Did you ask them if they had another room? I'd rather go there than have to move around tomorrow" (Yeah, forgot to mention I booked the wrong night there...i'd booked us in for the NEXT night not the night we arrived in Phuket! All those overnight Greyhound buses in Australia and having to book a place for the next day had confused and caught up with us. FAIL!)
"Oh, but this place very nice..."
After refusing to stay at her place that night, but taking her number telling her I'd call to book maybe when we're finished at the other place (Yeah, right!) we got into the Taxi, who knew finally where we were going. YAY.

On our way to the Green Papaya apartments, or what we THOUGHT was the Green Papaya... the Taxi drivers phone rang. I wonder who that could be? It sounded like a womans voice on the other end. Tina? What does she want now? Surely not.
After another few minutes, the taxi driver stopped... "Here is your hotel. Green Papaya!" He said.
I looked out of the window and saw an empty street with a few closed restaurants. It had a "one way" road sign at the end.
"If you go, keep walking....you will find it, it's down there on the left."
We both got out and started walking.
We walked to the end of the street, no sign of our apartment.
Luckily,a Thai couple who were closing their restaurant saw us and asked where we were going/ trying to find... we told them the Green Papaya... the Thai lady looked confused and said "There is no place here! This is Phuket Town!"
It turns out Phuket Town is half an hour away from Patong Beach, which is where we needed to be. She got out her laptop and told us to find the place on Agoda so she could see the address.

So he'd dropped us off here, in the middle of nowhere, knowing full well where he was meant to take us?!
The little... B**@*#*@*!!!!!
Livid is not the word for it...I wanted to go straight back to that Taxi rank and show Tina where she could shove her accomodation!
The Thai couple said they would take us to our apartments, if we gave them a little money of course as it's half an hour away. No problem. We just wanted to be there. It was 11.30 at night by now.
So we got in their car and off we went. They also called the Green Papaya to make sure they had a room for us for tonight. They did...phew!
We finally got there and were greeted by the most lovely couple... Paul and May. Paul is from Swindon and May is Thai, and they said they'd waited up for us to arrive because they had a feeling something wasn't right when Tina had called them.
Apparently "Tina" (If that is her real name! Probably not!) had told them she was a friend of ours and was checking to see if they had a room tonight, aswell as asking what price their rooms were so she could stay. She asked if we'd be arriving tomorrow and when told yes, said thank you and hung up!
What a little....words fail me.
Paul had apparently told her over the phone that they had a room, no problem...and she'd told me "maybe they don't!"
AAAAAAAAARGH!

Anyway, lesson learnt. There was no real way we could have avoided that one if we tried...how were we to know they were fake Taxi drivers?! Crazy!
We will know again though, and HEAVEN HELP ANYONE WHO TRIES ANY OF THAT AGAIN!
Anyway the past few days have really made up for it...despite the rain, it's been lovely staying with Paul and May! They told us we could use their kitchen when we arrived if we wanted anything to eat. There was ALWAYS bottles of water in our fridge every day complimentary...she cleaned our room every single day! She loves to mother people, and even made us egg on toast one night when it was raining so bad we couldn't go out!
Awwwww!!!

We had a crazy night on Bang La road...we lost connect 4 to some Thai girls, and had to buy them drinks...they must play it ALL DAY because there was just no beating them!!!!
We went to a few bars and ended up in a club ,it was really crazy on that road!
Enough said about Bang La Road...Checkie and Chris told us what it was like ;-)
We bought some wristbands off a Thai woman to add to our collection.
Mine says "I <3 U LONGTIME" and Luke's says "WOLFPACK".

Hahahahah!!!

Unfortunately we didn't make it to the beach once because it at some point rained every day...hopefully now we're moving on to Krabi the weather will brighten up a bit and we can go to Phi Phi Island!

Another update soon ;-)
Luke & Liz xxx