The Airport Mini-bus Scam

Normally I park my car at the airport of take a meter taxi.

This time I was traveling with a ton of luggage so I decided to try the mini-bus into Patong.

150 baht plus an extra 100 for my bags. Ok.

Once everyone was loaded up, 9 of us, the driver drove like a madman out of the airport and stopped abruptly 500 meters down the road at a tour office.

Two ladies approached the van opened the door and ordered everyone out of the van.

Bear in mind here I had been traveling for the past 60 hours and was in no mood to get hustled.

I saw their game they were attempting to sell their tour packages.

I asked why we had to disembark and the claimed some lame reason that the driver needed to know where we were going. We'd already told the driver were we were going.

I announce to my fellow occupants of the van that these ladies were going to try and sell them tours and if they just wanted to go to Patong and not buy tours, they was no need to disembark.

The ladies freaked and started yelling at me, whereupon I informed them if they didn't get this van moving to Patong I was going to call the tourist police, as I was reaching for my phone.

They adjusted their attitude quickly and we were on our way in about 3 minutes.

The icing on this adventure was it turned out one of the passengers was a thai guy who lived in Phuket town. So we got a 45 minute free tour of phuket town before going to Patong.

I don't think I'll be using the mini-bus again.

What a load of BS!.