On our 2nd day of our vacation, we had to plan our whole trip. We arrived in Thailand without having booked anything except the flights. So we went out to do that, and when we stood around in front of a super-market, a friendly thai-woman in her 50s, talked to us in proper english and asked us if she could help. We were looking for the train station and she told us the right way to go. But how we later combined, that was a little trick from her. She told us it would be cheaper to take a tuk-tuk and we should visit the tourist-information. This would be the last day, when every booking is tax-free.
We were tired, had a jet-lag and trusted this lady, so we took the tuk-tuk and went there. It only costed 80 BHT (about $2) to get there. The driver tried to bring us to a clothing factory, where everything is tax-free that day too. We heard of that to be a scam, so we pleased the driver to drive directly to tourist-information. So he did.
At this point I got to say, thai people see money when they see tourists - and you can't judge them for that. The avarage thai earns about $150-300 a month. Even if we later found out, that the whole private story of the lady was fake and she just tried to get us to the "tourist-information" to get her part of the cake, everything went well.
When we arrived at the "tourist information", which was nothing else then a travel agency, it just took about 1.5 hours to plan the whole trip. Including hotels, flights and transfers within Thailand and trips to things like the elephant farm. the price was fair and it would have taken 1 day minimum of our time to plan everything by ourselves. Jack from Tong Chai Tours 2 was our man! After we left, we saw that our driver waited all the time for us to bring us back to our hotel. That was included in the 80 BHT we paid, so gave him a ver good tip for his long patience.
All we got was 2 papers, so when we arrived at our hotel, we were a little afraid, that we could have been scammed. We paid already and we had nothing else then this lousy papers:
Jack's notes what he had to book for us
our bill that we already paid
Even though it doesn't look very trustworthy, everything, really everything went fine! Even though we booked two hotels on out own, we told Jack were to go and pick us up - everytime somebody was already waiting for us and we could enjoy the whole trip without any delays.
Therefore it was very late, Jack offered us to send us all required documents the next morning directly to our hotel - and he did.
All you get is a stack of bills with voucher numbers. And it seems like everywhere in Thailand, it works the same. On every bill you get the service provider and a telephone number for requests.
On the way back to the hotel, it was the first possibility to take some night pictures with my camera.
The day was about to find an end. But I forgot to say, it was my birthday! So we decided to take a drink at the sky bar of the Lebua hotel. And this was one of the most impressive and most beautiful birthdays I ever had.