The 50 Baht Adventure

Well, our trip was coming to a close. I was very sad for that to happen. Saturday was our last day in Phang-Nga, and we spent it like most of our days off, with beach and pool swimming and going to town. Our plan in town was to have lunch; get a Thai massage, since it was only eight bucks; make Kent wander around while I get a mani/pedi; do some final shopping; get a Swedish massage, since it was only fifteen bucks; have supper; go home.


Unfortunately we didn't plan our money very well. I'm not sure how that happened. After lunch, the Thai massages, the manicure and pedicure (which were the worst I've ever had, by the way), and a couple sarongs I had planned on getting, we hardly had any money left. So we had to superbudget our supper by just going back to the same place we went to for lunch, which was the cheapest we'd been to so far (but still decent food), and skip the Swedish massages. Boooo-urns. We did end up having enough money for me to force Kent to buy something besides a Red Bull shirt and some requisite sunglasses and a hat. He ended up finding a set of small wooden bowls that were 600 baht, in a rare shop that actually put prices on things, telling the shopkeeper that all he had was 500, take it or leave it, and finally getting her to agree.


So when all was said and done, we still had 50 baht to burn, and were determined not to leave town with change too small to bother exchanging at a bank back home. We also had time to burn before our taxi was meeting us, since we had time budgeted for two one-hour massages and only got one.


We decided to go around and tell shopkeepers that we had only 50 baht (which is about $1.65), to see what they would offer us. In Kenya, that could have gotten us something decent, but even though Thailand is cheap, it's not that cheap. We figured we'd get shown the postcard racks, mostly.

Kent told the first guy we tried this on about our money situation as we were walking away, and the dude called after us jokingly holding up what I think was a rubber ducky in his hand. We didn't go for it. The second shopkeep showed us the postcards, as expected. After that we just quietly browsed various stores for a while. Then finally, we were talking to a guy who knew English probably the best of all the people in town that we talked to, and Kent had to tell him about the 50 baht, as I think he was trying to get us to buy a bunch of stuff (of course). He showed us a shelf of little incense packages with two sets of mini-incense sticks, a tiny elephant-shaped holder, and a tiny candle, all inside a wooden open-topped case, to catch the ashes. It wasn't half bad for under two bucks. So we went with that--for me to keep, not him.


Here is the set. Cute, eh?



And for scale purposes, here it is with me, still with remnants of the bad manicure, holding the elephant: