Cha-am

Well we lucked out in the sense that we thought we wouldn’t be able to find a place to veg for a few days. All of the popular spots and islands within a 1/2 day drive from Bangkok were fully booked but we did find a nice little spot outside of Cha-am on the  northeast coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Booking.com said there was one garden view villa left so hurry and book now! Well, I will have a little diatribe about Booking.com in a few minutes. We booked a nice garden facing villa, the last one remaining and the last villa remaining according to BDC and made our way out of Bangkok three days ago. When we checked in they told us they upgraded us to a beach front. Nice! But um, we thought there was only one garden view room left? It’s a very nice villa, the beach isn’t much, the pool is nice and the grounds are nice but we’re only here for four nights so no problem. There are 34 villas in the resort and a grand total of three were occupied on our arrival. Us, a French family of four and another couple. The next morning the couple departed leaving a total of six guests in two villas. Very interesting so we checked BDC to see what was available for the next few days. Same thing, “ Only one garden villa left, no other rooms, book now, others are checking this resort as we speak”. We have now learned that Booking. com is, for a lack of better words, a scam. They make you think that if you don’t act “now” you will miss the great price and property and you will be shit out of luck. Now, we have used them before and the site works but we saw first hand the manipulation they use to get you to book pronto!. We tried to bring this to the attention of the front desk but they just smiled not understanding a bloody word we said, which brings us to “The joys of travel in foreign lands”.  We had the whole place to ourselves. The pool, restaurant and a motorcycle to use to by beer at a market for 1/4 of the cost they charged in the restaurant. Ordering meals was a lesson in biting your tongue, keeping your cool, playing charades and hope you get what you ordered. If you ask for cold water you get coke. Coke/cold, okay, I get that. If you ask for a plate to put your food on, blank stares. This is a resort in highly developed touristy Thailand and they didn’t even understand “toilet” and I had to make a bum wiping gesture to make them understand we needed toilet paper. Holy cow! No wait, that’s India where there’s a billion people and they at least understand “toilet”. Anyway, we virtually had this whole resort to ourselves. It’s nice but definitely not a place to spend more than a few days which brings me to the French family. They arrived the day we did and they had 9 days booked. They used BDC and the pictures on their website are wonderful. Beautiful beach, (but not your typical Thai standard), no beach chairs with umbrellas (but shown on the web site), great looking restaurant, (staged for their website), and people having fun and enjoying themselves around the pool and bar but there are no people and no bar but a nice pool. We felt very sorry for them as they are stuck here with a restaurant that closes at 8:00 pm and there is nothing to do. Moral of the story. Take everything you see on Booking.com with a very big grain of salt.

Anyway, we head back to Bangkok tomorrow for one night and then fly to Mandalay, Myanmar on Thursday for three weeks of wild and wacky adventures. Well, adventures and some sight-seeing and then probably more beach time before heading back to Thailand. Our motto: “Adventure, for sure, beach time, absolutely!”.

Below a couple of pics of our place near Cha-am and a litter of 2 month old Chihuahua’s.