Me and my credit card....

Me and my credit card(s!) do not seem to be best friends. I have lost 4 credit cards due to robbery, ATM machines, lost in mail in Denmark (stolen by Post Danmark) etc. All this just within one year.

Yesterday I wanted to leave Koh Tao and go to Bangkok for some days, because I have skin infection (= no diving anyway), and I then I used my credit card in an ATM/cash machine to get a little bit of money for the trip. Well, the ATM happily took my card then did NOTHING.

There I stand waiting in front of an ATM for more than 1 hour - and thereby missing my boat, my train and my hotel. I would never leave an ATM which maybe pushes out your credit card to a random person one hour later... I of course called the (only) phone number available on the ATM, but they did not have a branch on Koh Tao, so they could come by in 2 or 3 days. Well, great. I could choose to use 15 minutes (and STILL miss my boat, train and prepaid hotel) to block my credit card and then go to Bangkok anyway - without a credit card (and then wait 3-6 weeks and pay a fortune for getting a new one send to Bangkok). Or I could insist on calling the bank around 10 times to get here quickly. Well, since they only had people working 10 hours boat and bus ride away, it seemed pretty impossible.... But for some lucky reason they DID have people coming to the island to fill up the ATM's once every week. And damn, I was lucky. It was the same day that a person from (another bank) was anyway filling up this specific ATM. He came after one hour (far to late for the last boat that day) . He used around 20 minutes to get my card back out. And then what do you do? You have left your hotel room on Koh Tao and you may miss hotel, boat and train for around 700 Danish Kroner. Well, you call a good friend who know some people working for the boat company. They managed to halt the boat (with around 400 other people) for more than one hour - just for me. So I managed to get onto the boat and I managed to not loose my prepaid hotel reservation in Bangkok. Sometimes I feel SO unlucky (especially with my credit cards), but then other times I feel SO lucky that I know people who know people - and who actively help me....

One of the photos shows this (stupid) ATM. Another photo shows the typical entrance of a restaurant at Koh Tao (where you always take off your sandals/shoes before entering). The last photo shows that Koh Tao currently has pretty strong winds allowing kite-surfers (otherwise rare here) playing on the water.