Tuesday, July 24, 2007
I'M BACK!!!I had a super duper awesome time @ Phuket and I'm already missing the sand, sea, sun, beach, food, shopping... Basically, I'm missing everything about Phuket! It was a wonderous 5 days on the trip with baby for our 7th year anniversary. *muaks* Love ya loadz Baby..
Anyway, here's how our trip went..
Day 1We arrived @ Phuket International Airport @ around 730am (Thailand is one hour behind Singapore). We were transferred to our hotel via a mini bus. It took about 45 mins to reach Royal Paradise Hotel @ Patong Beach. After resting and checking out our hotel room (which was totally splendid), Baby and I headed out for lunch and also to look for a travel agency to book our tours. It was only about 1030am in the morning and the streets were still pretty quiet. We walked around abit and finally settled on a Thai restaurant and had a traditional Thai lunch (prawn cakes, chicken curry, thai-styled chicken... ). After which we walked around to check out the tour prices to determine which one offered the best price. We ended up booking all our tours under the same travel agency run by a very nice lady. We continued to walk around and headed back just in time for our spa appointment @ 3pm. It was a 2.5 hr spa complete with massage, aromatheraphy scrub and manicure. After we were done, we headed out again to check out the night life and had our dinner (Thai food again) as well as some snacks along the streets. We also headed to this market place called Patong Otop where all the bikinis, tshirts and stuff were sold (a little like our pasar malam). Baby bought some tshirts and we then headed back to our hotel. We didn't have a good sleep the night before because we were too excited about the trip so we bathed and had an early night.
Day 2We had a full day of activities planned. We woke up early in the morning, had breakfast and waited for our transport for our island hopping trip @ 8am. We visited Maya, Phi Phi and Khai Islands including the monkey beach and viking caves. We visited filming spots of the movie 'The Beach' as well. We snorkelled, swam, suntanned, fed fishes, fed monkeys and took pictures for the whole morning and afternoon. The waters were so clean and clear. Baby and I took seats right in front of the speedboat and the trip was really damn fun. Baby said it seemed like we were on a rollercoaster ride. Haha. Yeah I totally agree. So much so that we suffered back aches and neck pain the next day. =P We arrived back @ our hotel around 530pm. We ordered room service for our dinner and headed to wait for our transport to the Simon Cabaret show (ah-gua show). Some boo-boo happened here. Our travel agent actually collected our tickets before hand and left it at our hotel's reception but we were not informed by them. We were kinda stranded there without tickets and our travel agent had to travel to our hotel to collect our tickets and bring them to the show venue. We were late for half and hour for the show. Nevertheless, it was a really great show with very good sound and visual effects. Even their backdrops were so professional. Haha. Some of them really look like girls and are actually very pretty leh. Figure also very nice =P After the show, we went to watch a 'Tiger Show', recommended by this usher at Simon Cabaret. It was really a waste of money manz. Kinda lame. =P But it was an experience la.. Hehe.. We went back to the hotel after that and whiles walking back through one of the small streets. Baby and I realise that the pubs near our hotel are actually for men. Meaning for all men (You get the meaning?) They even have shows in the night where "girls" wear those feather stuff like cabaret like that. Eeks!
Day 3We headed to the Phuket Zoo in the morning around 830am after breakfast. I was so excited because of the photo taking with tiger cubs and Baby was excited about taking with the adult tiger. =P Scary. It took us only about 2 hours or so to finish all the animal shows and phototaking. We watched the monkey, crocodile and elephant show and took pictures with monkeys, orang utan, adult tiger and also of us feeding the tiger cub. We left the zoo around 1130pm. We initially booked a transport with the travel agent at 5pm for them to bring us to the Thai market @ Phuket town but since we were early, we decided to change our time to 3pm. In between then, we walked over to Jungceylon (a big shopping center) to walk around. There was Carrefour there and also Dunkin Donuts (I love donuts)! We ended up having lunch at a local fast food called 'Mr Good' whose food wasn't that good. =P What an irony. It took about an hour to travel to Phuket Town and our driver stopped us at a cashew nut factory to get some local Thai products. We bought quite abit of food products from this shop (The driver probably earned quite abit of commission there =P) The market really sold stuff at a much much cheaper rate than Patong Beach. Bargaining skills din work here cos even if u bargain, they won't budge. But the prices here was already so cheap, there's probably no need to bargain. We bought lotsa stuff here (at low, low prices). We also bought lotsa local food and drinks to da bao back to the hotel for our dinner. We walked for around for about 3 hours then our driver drove us back to the hotel where we had dinner, watched tv, took pictures of what we bought and went to bed.
Day 4This was a R&R day. We din have any main activities planned today. We woke up just in time to have breakfast then had a swim at the hotel swimming pool. We then headed out to do our shopping and massage. I was a little worried about doing the massage at the street shops where a bunch of girls sat there and started calling out to people to come into their shop. So initially I din wana do the massage. Was planning for baby to do the massage and I'll just do a pedicure. But whiles shopping @ Jungceylon, we saw a few shops also providing massage services and the place was clean and din look bad so baby and I both had our traditional Thai massage at done there. It was abit more expensive than the prices on the streets but at least I felt safer. =P We shopped and shopped till around evening where we had a drink @ Starbucks whiles waiting for the seafood stalls to open. We then had seafood at one of the restaurants along the beach. We had a seafood basket (lobster, crab, crayfish, prawns, squid, fish) and ordered another extra lobster. Yummy. It was damn fulfiling manz. We also had dessert and the bill came up to no small amount. =P But definitely cheaper than seafood in SG. We continued walking and shopping and went back to our hotel to pack our stuff in preparation for our departure the next day. *sigh* Sad.
Day 5
Our last day @ Phuket. Sad. We had a late breakfast again and then slacked till around 2pm. We then checked out and left our luggage @ the bell desk and headed out to buy stuff that we had forgotten or missed out. We had lunch @ Burger King. It was much more expensive than Singapore even though the choices were around the same. =P We headed back to the hotel around half an hour earlier than the transport to the airport was due to arrive and took pictures around the hotel lobby. We reached the airport around 6pm. After checking in, we loitered around the departure hall and looked around at their duty free shop. The perfumes and stuff they were selling were the same price as those you would find in our normal shopping centers. =P We had some food before we boarded our plane back to SG. Baby bought a bottle of Mont Blanc perfume @ the Changi Duty Free shop. Then we headed home.
That is the end of our Phuket honeymoon. Although short, but it gave me memories to last me forever. Thanks for the fun and laughter Baby! Awaitin our Taiwan trip next year! =)
I'm still posting up the pictures. We were like crazy, snapping away at everything and anything we see. Took around 900+ pictures! Will post up the address once I'm done. But will post some nice pictures first. Hee =)
10:11 PM