Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Unforgettable Travel Experience

Recently AirAsia and MAS have offered cheap tickets, and many tour agencies offer various attractive tour packages. Have you planned your holiday trip already? Talking about travelling, it reminds me about one of the unforgettable experience that happened in Hatyai many years ago.
A few years back, I went to Langkawi with my friends. From Langkawi, we took the local tour package to Hatyai...just the ground tour arrangement. We took ferry from Langkawi to Hatyai. After reaching the jetty, we were asked to sit in a special taxi that will send us to our hotel in Hatyai. The Thai taxi is very different from the taxi in our country, the taxi just like a small lorry with roof and wooden chairs at the back. More than 10 people just squeezed in that small "taxi", some tourists went to Phuket, some went to Hatyai. The journey took more than one hour...and we just squeezed like sardin fish. Then bad thing happened...started raining. The rain poured inside...helped us to wash our face. Luckily the rain was not too heavy.
When we reached the town area, we were so happy thinking that we will reach the hotel soon. But the nightmare started. The driver didnt know the actual location of our hotel. The driver sent other passengers to their hotels first. When we reached the last hotel, other passengers went down and my friend went to the toilet. We told the driver to wait for a while and we thought he understood that. But when other passengers took all their luggages, the driver drove away. We asked him to stop...but he couldnt understand what we said (in English). Oh no...my friend was left behind without anything, no luggage and her purse was with me. Die....my goodness...at that moment I truly can understand the situation where a chick tries to talk to a duck. Finally, the driver stopped and let us down in front of a shopping complex. He couldnt find the hotel and he also couldnt understand what we said....so we took all our luggages and walked back to the hotel where my friend had been left. Luckily we still remembered the way back to that hotel. Thank goodness...my friend was waiting for us in front of the hotel. After that, we took another taxi to our hotel. Despite that bad experience, we did enjoy the rest of the trip.
The lesson learnt : if you are not familiar with the language used in that country, better join tour or go with someone who can communicate in that language.

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