Why not to mess with a Thai tuk-tuk driver

So we’d been camped out on Kamala Beach for a couple of days now and were ready to explore more of the island. We’d heard rumors that Phuket Town was cheaper than the beaches (which made sense) so we decided we’d head inland to have our long-anticipated seafood feast. (We’d been ordering some great shrimp on the beach but were ready for some crab and maybe lobster.) As much as I loved the tuk-tuks in Phuket, they were pricey. 300 baht to get into Phuket Town (divide by 40 for USD—doesn’t seem much, but for comparison we paid 540 baht for a 2-person room at the YMCA in Chiang Mai; also, it was 300 baht to rent a mo-ped for a day… unfortunately it’s against company policy to rent a mo-ped at all). Anyway, we paid the 300 baht and said “Phuket Town.” As we got into town, we asked the driver if he knew any good seafood places, he said he did, and we headed that direction. I knew we were in trouble as we kept heading farther and farther out of town. Our contingency plan was that if he took us somewhere shady or expensive, we could walk somewhere less shady and less expensive. But, as we turned onto a quarter-mile long dirt road, far from town, we realized that was out of the question. The place he took us to was nice. We were seated on a deck overlooking some water. Too nice, I thought. I was right. The crab on the menu was over 500 baht, lobster even more. We’d been eating for around 100 at Kamala. But, we had already sat down and put in our drink orders before we saw the menu (our mistake), so we waited for the drinks, drank them and left. For whatever reason (maybe this had happened before, I thought), our tuk-tuk driver was still waiting in the parking lot of the restaurant when we left. We’re saved! We told the driver that the place was nice, but too expensive. Can you take us somewhere cheaper, we asked? No problem, he said, he knew just the place—and there was no extra charge. What a great guy. We drove back down the dirt road and back into Phuket Town. When we stopped, the driver pointed us down an alley. Cheap seafood, he said, that way. We skeptically crept down the alley to a large, sliding metal door at the back. It was cracked enough to see couches around the walls with reclining Thai woman and was without a doubt, definitely not a restaurant. This time the tuk-tuk was gone and we knew we’d been punk’d. Apparently in Thai, cheap seafood means cheap prostitutes. We bu yao’d out of there, down the street to a corner restaurant with plenty of sunlight and openness—mei yo shadiness. We opened the menu: right around 100 baht, the same price as our usual places. We had a nice meal and found a tuk-tuk for the ride home. “Kamala Beach, please. We’ve already had dinner.”

(Bu yao is “I don’t want it” in Chinese; mei yo: without.)