Day 22

21/09/12

Headed to the tourist police station early hoping my bag had arrived. There was only one guy in and he said it should come at 9am so I went to get some breakfast at an outdoor restaurant, pointing at the curry I wanted. When I got back there was still no bag, it should have been here by now. Balls. The policeman on duty didn’t speak much English so he put me onto the main tourist police on the phone. The police chief (or just “Boss” as I call him), arrived. He told me to wait for Arron to come to work and started to make calls. Meanwhile more police arrived at the office and we chatted away. The guys were intent on embarrassing the intern girls working there and trying to set me up with them. Everyone in Thailand wants to get me a girl! The tourist police aren’t too busy with it being the low season, so a bunch of us were joking around. I caught up on some more diary entries too using their free wi-fi.

Arron arrived and explained that there had been a failure with the bus connections. Despite him telling the travel agents to put my bag on the Surat Thani bus, instead some idiot had sent it on a bus to Bangkok bus station. I groaned wondering how long it could survive there without getting raided. He had to sort this all out at 6am when they called him to inform him. He told them in no uncertain terms to get the bag on the next Surat bus. Unfortunately that wasn’t till tomorrow, so I’d need to stay another day in Surat Thani. Damn. Big Boss took us for breakfast mark II, I tried some sweet rice.

By now my clothes were getting a bit scummy (all the rest being in my missing bag!) so Arron said he’d lend me some for the day. Top chap. I continued taking advantage of the police wi-fi and then went to my hotel to book for another night. Back at the station I changed into clothes Arron lent me and he offered to take me shopping, as I needed a new bag. My shoulder bag was falling apart which I keep my tripod and all my valuables in when they need to be stored and when I’m changing site. He drove me to the nearby Tesco Lotus, which is like Tesco at home but with a bigger emphasis on clothes and household stuff. There were loads of fancy cars and trucks in the car park compared to your normal Thai transportation, and the shoppers inside seemed quite well-to-do. I found a bag but decided to shop around elsewhere tomorrow to find a better deal.

Arron drove us out to his sister’s house on the outskirts of town to collect a letter which he delivered to the nearby university where she works. The university was big with impressively well-kept grounds, full of flower-lined roads and big pictures of the royal family. Lots of uniformed students were going around on motorbikes and in buses. Then he offered to drive me up to a local viewpoint. It was in a national park up a forested hill. The car park in the jungle was filled with noise, cicadas and birds chirping away. The viewpoint overlooked Surat Thani city and to the sea beyond. The land was really flat and suddenly turned to jungle-covered hills in the far distance. Surat Thani sprawled below. Unfortunately I’d left my camera at the police station, not realising I’d come anywhere with a view!

I mentioned I hadn’t seen any animals walking around (aside from a guy peeing in the jungle!) and Arron led me down a path to some cages where monkeys swung around inside. When we approached one a gibbon, white with dark eye patches, swung down to meet us. He came down to eye level and he was sucking his thumb with one hand, and putting his other arm through the gaps, letting us shake hands with him and stroke him. He stared at us with very human eyes and I felt sorry for him, animals like this in the wild can have territories of over 50km, but his territory was about 5 meters – yet the freedom of the jungle was just outside. When we moved around the cage he followed us. We saw other types of monkeys in other cages, some afraid, some curious and some indifferent. A baby macaque grabbed my finger and pulled it towards its mouth. It may look like a sausage mate, but it’s not for eating!

In other cages were peacocks and a wild boar who was oinking away at us. I commented that at christmas we sometimes ate boar as a treat. That shut him up. We drove back to Surat Thani passing a bad road accident where a pickup had flipped upside-down off the road. The windscreen was smashed in on the drivers side and it looked like he probably wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. The police were already on the scene. Another example of the deadly driving over here!

I parted ways with Arron and caught up on some blogging at the hotel to rest. In the evening I caught a songthaew into the town centre. For some reason in the back was an old .50 calibre machine gun ammo box. I didn’t ask. I went around shops and department stores in the town center bag-hunting, but not buying anything. Then I went to the night food market which was really busy. Rows and rows of stalls offering foods of all kinds. From grilled meat to fried potato cakes, noodles to rice, sweet cakes to jellies, fruitshakes to iced coffee, the full range of Thai street food was here. I got a bit over-enthusiastic and bought 5 bags of different foods. Back at the hotel I got through three and was stuffed. Heroically I managed to finish it all off though, giving myself indigestion that night. What a fatty!

Day 21

20/09

I rose early to try and get to the tourist information office when it opened, hauling all my things in case my missing backpack turned up. The hotel desk girl gave me poor directions and after half an hour I couldn’t find it. I decided to try a motorbike taxi, the guys at the stop didn’t have a clue what I was saying, so I just got on the back and pointed in the direction I wanted to go! We cruised up the long road where the tourist information was supposed to be but at the end we hadn’t found it so I got off and caught a songthaew going the other way. Again the driver spoke no English and didn’t know where we were going! After some discussion from his colleagues he dropped me off ten minutes later. I still couldn’t see it but the street number was correct. After trying a few official-looking buildings I eventually found an English speaker who gave me the correct directions.

Inside the Tourist Information were some trainee girls and fortunately a chap who spoke decent English. He helped me with my broken phone and discovered the SIM card had been locked which I must have done by accident. I explained the situation with my backpack and he phoned the tourist police for me. 15 minutes later they showed up, all Thai, one guy called Arron who spoke pretty good English and two other uniformed and armed policemen who didn’t speak much. I explained the situation and had to fill out a incident form. Then they drove me in a police car to the bus office which now was open.

Arron talked with the lady inside for a long time and started making lots of phone calls. He asked me details about the incident. After a while we drove off to another travel office in town, this one I recognised as people bound for Bangkok had got off the bus here. The staff at the desk answered Arron’s questions and the lady spoke English, I described what had happened and she said knew the drivers and the bus – looks like we were getting somewhere. She explained the bus had stopped at three places and they weren’t sure which one the bag might have been dropped at. The police started looking through CCTV footage from outside this office from yesterday. The woman told me they thought they’d found the bag. Great! After more waiting and many phone calls from Arron, it was back into the car to the first travel office again.

The police who helped me, Arron is on the left

After more discussion and calls, it seemed the travel agents were sending us around in circles blaming each other. Arron took a call and explained to me that the bag may have ended up on a bus to Bangkok. Uhoh. Back to the second travel agents. Here they looked through CCTV again and called me over. Sure enough on the CCTV you could see my bag had been unloaded with a pile of others and then left alone outside the office. About 20 minutes later on the footage a woman who is obviously a tourist is pointing at the bag and discussing with someone off screen, and she picks it up and takes it away. They say she’s loaded it onto a bus bound for Bangkok. Clearly she’s well-meaning but not exactly what I needed!

The travel agents phoned Bangkok and found out my bag was there at their office. Phew. Well at least we’d found it, whether it had anything of value left inside remained to be seen (padlocks are easily broken). The buses on that route are notorious for theft.

Arron arranged for the travel agency to put my bag on the next bus back to Surat Thani, which arrived at 6am the next day. They had to drop it at the tourist police office so I could check the contents with an officer. Sounded good. Now I had to spend another night here. It was past midday so I offered to get Arron and the other policemen some lunch for helping me. On the way we stopped at a phone shop and Arron got them to unlock my phone for free. Fantastic. We drove to a local restaurant and had lunch where I met the friendly tourist police chief.

Afterwards we drove to the tourist police station on the edge of town and I took a hotel close by. Arron kindly offered to take me out in the evening after work. I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on my diary in the hotel, and I met Arron at dusk. We were going to a fitness center outside of town. I still was wearing the same clothes from yesterday, thankfully I still had my walking shoes. The fitness center had a big running track and around it various sports were being played – basketball, football, boules and handball, which is pretty popular over here. There was a small stadium and an outdoor aerobics class in full swing. The place was busy with lots of people on the track. We walked for a few loops and lots of people were looking at the farang (foreigner) exercising at their place! We jogged for a bit and on the way some ladies appeared who Arron knew, and joined us for a few loops. One of the ladies works for the car tax office,  Arron sells second hand cars for another source of income and works with her sometimes. He was trying to set me up with the other girl because she was single! Both ladies looked amazingly young for their age, just like Arron. Healthy people I suppose!

After the fitness center we drove to a small gym, where we used the steam room and some outdoor hot pools. It was great after a busy and stressful day! Back in town the  police chief joined us for dinner. We scoffed a variety of tasty dishes including spicy shellfish, a kind of cabbage in gravy, fried fish and Tom Yam spicy seafood soup. We had a good laugh chatting and learning about each other’s lives.

There’s around 10 tourist police officers for the whole province plus superiors, who are all based in the city tourist police station. Arron’s been in the tourist police for 5 years and before that was local police. He has a degree in political science and taught English for a short while. The police chief has been in the job for 2 years and was a normal police officer before that. Arron lives alone in the city center – owning his own house, the price seemed comparable to back home for the location. I was curious about the big restaurant culture here. Arron told me generally people might eat out 3 or 4 times a week because it’s so cheap, although he doesn’t like cooking so he eats out all the time!

Arron dropped me at the hotel and I thanked him for a good night. He and the other police had really taken care of me, making me feel at home and going way above the call of duty to welcome me. I was a lucky guy!

Day 20

19/09/12

Started the day by booking a ferry transfer to SuratThani on the mainland. In one day I hoped to reach Khao Sak national park, I could get a bus from SuratThani there, over half-way across the mainland (about 130km).

There must have been some miscommunication about the transfer times because over an hour waiting at the resort I was still waiting for my pickup. Eventually it showed up and we went on a death ride across most of the island. The driver was speeding and doing reckless maneuvers to make up lost time. We had one very near miss with oncoming traffic. We reached a dock miraculously unscathed and I was transferred to a coach which took me to the Raja ferry port. At the port were a number of big car ferries and we walked on board past the shell of a big boat on the shore. The coach drove on board. I stayed inside as I was knackered and the views weren’t anything magnificent and read my Kindle. There was a lounge and shop inside with comfy seats and tables, though the boat was pretty old and showing its age. It was fairly quiet, most of the passengers were Thai with some tourists thrown in.

A few hours later we arrived at Donsack docks and got back on the coach. About an hour later we reached the outskirts of Surat Thani and the bus stopped a few times with people getting off. I knew the bus terminated at the bus station or train station so I stayed on. We stopped in the centre and the last people got off, it didn’t look like the bus station so I asked the driver and his assistant, who didn’t really speak English – fortunately I knew the name of the bus station and they drove me a few blocks to there. I got out and asked for my backpack from the hold, miming what I needed and pointing. The assistant seemed confused and discussed with the driver. I kept repeating what I needed and tried to open the hold door but it was locked. The assistant told me, “No, at office” “Your bag at office”. Great.So either I was being lied to or there had been a mistake and my bag had been offloaded at one of the earlier stops. I insisted it was in the hold but they weren’t having any of it, telling me it’s at the bus office. A songthaeow was nearby and the assistant spoke to him and told me that he’d told the taxi where to take me. I was the last person left and didn’t really know what to do. Noone spoke anything but basic English. If they were trying to drive off with my bag, I could make a scene, but I didn’t even know if it was inside. The confusion about the bag’s location seemed genuine and they’d made the effort to drive me to the bus station beyond their normal stop. In retrospect I’m still not sure what the best course of action would have been. Refuse to leave the bus until they opened the hold? Then they could have driven me off anywhere or if things got ugly with my refusal, I wasn’t in great shape to defend myself with the shoulder. Actually I think know phoning the tourist police would have been the best option, that’s if they’d stayed around for me to make a phone call. Anyway it wouldn’t have worked because I later found out my Thai phone had barred me from making calls! Interested to hear what you think I should have done.

Anyway, what I did do, was get in the taxi hoping that I wasn’t being strung up. He took me to the bus office a few km away. The main road seemed familiar but I wasn’t sure if we’d stopped there earlier as the bus curtains were closed. When we arrived it was after 5 and the place was shuttered up. Bugger. Now I was really stuck. I had no choice but to stay here tonight and try the office tomorrow. Thankfully I still had all my money and most of my valuables on me, but the main bag had plenty of expensive stuff including all my travel clothes, hard drive, little camera, credit card and more. I asked the taxi driver to take me to a hotel from the guidebook. When we arrived he recommended I call the tourist police and to him it sounded like my bag had been taken. At the hotel, a little way out from the centre, the staff only spoke basic English. I was shattered and feeling light headed, it had been a hot day and I hadn’t slept well the previous night. I got into the hotel room and rested to collect my thoughts.

I thought I should call the tourist police to get some advice. That’s when I discovered that my Thai phone was blocking my calls. I assumed I’d ran out of credit. The way I saw things, if the driver had gone off with my bag, it would be long gone by the time the police tracked it down anyway, plus there were many places the bag could have been taken so nothing could be proven. Therefore there wasn’t a massive urgency to get hold of them, plus I still hadn’t verified if it was at the office, although the more I thought about it the more unlikely it seemed it would be there.

First step was to get some phone credit, if my bag was gone tomorrow I’d need to phone all the relevant companies. I’d also need to buy a load of basics to be able to continue travelling at all. I only had a very basic map of the city but knew I was near the Tourist Information, it would be helpful to find that for tomorrow. Noone spoke enough English at the hotel enough to help so I went out to hunt around 7pm. I passed shops and restaurants and eventually found a 7/11 and bought some phone credit. I didn’t have any joy with the tourist office and as it was getting late I headed back. I managed to get the hotel wi-fi working after a difficult explanation with the front desk, unfortunately the tourist police didn’t seem to have an English presence online. I tried to top up the mobile phone but got the same Thai voice message. Damn, something was wrong with the phone. I decided my best course of action would be to find the tourist information tomorrow and get them to help me with the phone, then I could go to the bus office and if there were any problems I could phone the tourist police from there. Had a restless night.