Just returned from yet another visa run to Ranong. Six of us in, I hate to admit it, a Toyota SUV thing. Good run down and over to Burma and everything was going well until @50 kms south of HH.
As many of you will know, when you pick up a hire vehicle there's hardly any petrol in the tank, so all of us wanting to be decent farang cheap charlies, we weren't going to return it with much in either.
So, an executive decision was made to stop and put in 100 - yes 100 - Baht's worth of fuel to get back on bare minimum. Into the garage and one of the party definitely asked the attendent in Thai for 100 baht's worth. We all wandered off for a moment to have a smoke and before we'd realised it, there was over 1,000 baht in the tank.
Stand off time. We were refusing to pay, the attendent insisted that the farang had said "fill her up" etc etc. They'd already made a note of the licence number.
Local plod arrive - just by chance - to fill up and everyone rushed over to give their version of events. He just shrugged and rode away. So, eventually we suggest that all but 100 baht's worth of petrol is siphoned off and the garage agreed.
Using the smallest pipe imaginable, they'd got half of it out an hour later. so we suggesed that they measure up what they had and we'd pay the outstanding which came to 514 Baht and 500 settled it. None of us wanted to wait another hour.
Moral of the story? Not sure, but I doubt any petrol attendant really expects six westerners to get out of a 1.4 million baht vehicle and only ask for 100 Baht of petrol.
I'm giggling about it now, but fortunately it all turned out OK and everyone saved a bit of face.
I suppose this cheap charlie can't afford an extra brussel sprout or three for his Xmas dinner now
