BACKPACKING STORY

THE NIGHT I BLEW MY BUDGET ON PRAWNS IN PHUKET

A twenty-five-dollar-a-day Thailand budget, a girl from Málaga and fifteen king prawns that turned out to cost six dollars each.

THAILAND · PHUKET · 5 MIN READ · DANIEL MERCER

It was in my second year at university that I worked part-time at Argos for two semesters. I had a few goals: spend three weeks backpacking around Thailand, get my first stamp in my passport and see what a gap year after uni might be like. My budget was twenty-five dollars a day. It wasn’t much, but I’d watched a YouTube video that said it could be done: ten dollars for the dorm, five for food, and the rest for beers on the beach. I had exactly that much money and no more, so I had to be very careful. My parents had warned me they wouldn’t be sending me any more.

My first stop was Phuket, and on my first day at the hostel I met a couple of Spanish girls. I had studied Spanish for my A-levels, and although it was rusty, I wanted to practise. Let’s be honest, one of them, from Málaga, was gorgeous, with the greenest eyes I had ever seen, and I wanted a few spicy stories to tell my mates back at uni in September.

They tolerated my terrible Spanish and agreed to let me tag along to a street market where the food was an assault on the senses. The air was thick with charcoal smoke and lemongrass, and every stall was sizzling at once. I was still a bit jet-lagged, but with all that food my appetite woke up.

THE SIX-DOLLAR PRAWNS

There were chicken skewers, noodle soups, and then what really caught my eye: huge king prawns on a tray, with a sign that said six dollars. “From the sea today,” the vendor told me.

I think the girls said they’d rather have something else, that it was too expensive. Or at least that’s what I thought I understood. My Spanish wasn’t as good as I’d believed.

Six dollars a kilo? That’s not expensive. How much could five of those monsters weigh? Half a kilo? I looked at the girl from Málaga.

This was my moment.

“This one is on me,” I said.

I could afford it: fifteen prawns, maybe two kilos, twelve dollars, dirt cheap. Back in Manchester it would cost five times as much. On the first night I could stretch the budget a little. Besides, those green eyes were driving me crazy.

“Fifteen prawns,” I told the vendor. “Put fifteen on the grill.”

It was a feast. The king prawns were fresh, the beer was ice cold and the company was unbeatable. I felt like a king, pun intended. All those hours selling jewellery at Argos had been worth it.

THE BILL

When I asked for the bill, the numbers didn’t add up. Six times fifteen, plus three beers. A hundred dollars, or the equivalent in baht. This guy was crazy. How much did those prawns weigh? Had he put stones on the scale?

I asked for an explanation, and the vendor gave it straight away: the prawns weren’t sold by weight but by the piece.

Six dollars each.

Imagine my face. I did the sum again, slower, as if the answer might change. I had just blown four days of budget on prawns.

God. I couldn’t believe it. Still, I didn’t want to look desperate. The girl from Málaga was my real mission, and I wasn’t going to let her see I was a poor devil with a student’s budget. So I paid.

That’s how the night ended: me calculating how many meals I could survive on instant noodles, and the Spanish girls heading back early to the hostel because they had to travel to one of the islands the next day.

Thailand was a blast. As you can imagine, by the fourth day of my trip I had to call my parents and ask them to send me money. Backpacking there on twenty-five dollars a day is harder than it looks when you’re a teenager looking for a good time.

The following year I was back at Argos selling jewellery to repay my parents. So much for the gap year. I blame those green eyes and the bloody prawns.