After our encounter with the less-than-honest Mr. Epaulet, I was not going to be fooled again. I was standing on the street corner waiting for the rest of our crew to catch up. I was looking at the tourist map of Bangkok. The young Thai man standing next to me asked if he could help. I explained that I was trying to figure out what we wanted to see and do next.
“Well, what have you seen already?” Wow, how refreshingly helpful after yesterday’s con job.
I told him the sights we had already seen.
“Have you been to the reclining Buddha, yet?” he asked.
“Why no, we haven’t”
“May I?” he gestured to my map and pulled out a pen.
He circled the reclining Buddha. “And then some good Bangkok shopping…” He drew some more lines. “…and then the Standing Buddha temple.” More circles and lines.
Hey thanks, that looks like a pretty good plan. This guy just saved us a lot of time.
He explained that he was from a small Thai village and he was in Bangkok visiting family. Ah, a fellow tourist just like me.
By now the rest of the family had joined me and my new friend on the street corner. “Would you like for me to get you a pair of tuk-tuks,” he offered.
“If you don’t mind, that would be great.” Wow. So friendly. So helpful.
After waving down two tuk-tuks, he explained to me that he had told the drivers to take us around and to wait for us at each sight. And it was only going to be 100 baht for several hours. Now that’s more like it. He reviewed our itinerary: Reclining Buddha, some markets, Standing Buddha temple.
We didn’t specifically ask for the market, but hey, this guy knows what he’s doing and I think the ladies would like to do a little shopping.
After being snookered yesterday, I was really thankful to deal with a straight-shooter. Out of appreciation, I slipped him a few baht –just enough to buy himself a cold drink. I thought about giving him a little knuckle tap, but decided we'd had enough of those yesterday.
We all piled into our two tuk-tuks and off we went.
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