What I did in Phuket

What have I done in Phuket? Let's see... I went on a cruise ship to Phi Phi Island






And the deck is full of tourists who can't get enough of the glorious sun...






This is the closest I can get to Maya Bay...sigh cruise ship is too big to dock there...






Unlike smaller speed boat, can go up close to practically any beach they want.






It would definitely helps too if you owns a private yacht... Then you can dock anywhere, anytime you want ^^





We passed by beautiful Viking Cave...the water there is so smooth so clear that you'll wish you could dip into it...





Souvenir that we getbuy at the cruise ship






The scenery at Phi Phi Island is totally breathtaking. It was absolutely enthralling with the clear blue sky and clear greenish-blue water.








Hmm.. what do you think they were doing? Scooping up wet sand?;p






Tadaa!!!! they were actually hunting some sea creatures that lived in wet sand...Kinda like crab, but it is not. Actually, they saw the locals bending down and scooping up sand once the tide rushes back to the sea. So they were extremely intrigued by it hence they tried it themselves.

Hands on experience is very important don't you think?

I watched beautiful sunset by the beach..





Followed by dinner at Sabai-Sabai, near the Patong Beach there...

It boast the best Thai dish where all locals knew. The signboard create a feeling that this shop is like a well-kept secret amongst the locals and regular tourists. THE price was good though, not cutthroat like some other restaurants and the food tasted delicious as well. A good recommendation for tourists on a budget or those who do not wish to be charge an arm and a leg for a meal.



SOMEHOW, soft drinks in Phuket just have to be bottle served. And I mean, everywhere. The brand that always appear on the menu would be, FANTA!






After dinner, the boys prowled around the infamous Soi Bangla (Bangla Road) where it is famous for its nightlife activitites.





And they found this! Pork hamburger. Haha it was called Samurai Burger or something. The thing is, we don't always encountered pork anything that sell so blatantly in Malaysia, so we were....erm not used to it? haha anyway, it tasted delicious though^^

Sun rise view from our hotel balcony...

The next day, I also went on a long boat trip to... *drum roll*






JAMES BOND ISLAND!!!





This is our first stop, at the Canoe ship...





And I go canoeing. woohoo!






We went through many low rock formation, kinda like a water cave entrance like that haha..pretty fun and exhilarating.






And finally, we reached our designation destination, James Bond Island! Tadaa~~~




Ok, it wasn't much of an island actually, it was just the special rock formation that were made famous by a certain James Bond movie.


Yeah, you guessed it right. I did not watch that movie, hence I have no idea about how "special" the rock was. However, the place was indeed beautiful and a good tourists attraction spot, eversince James Bond went there long long time ago^^








I also went to the Island Safari, where I saw clever elephants do stunts. They are a clever lot, and a hungry lot too. They never have enough of food.

acrobatic elephant

Oh, and they are also good at smooching ppl ^^

Ever seen a Slam Dunk Monkey? I have!





And an elephant ride follows after that...





Dinner's at S&G Restaurant, which is just opposite Sabai-Sabai.






This is what we had for our dinner. The food was excellent!!! In term of price, it was good as well. Good food for a good price? A bargain, I would say.







A drink at Starbucks?

Optional^^

Phuket Day 2

Complimentary breakfast at Hotel coffee shop before we depart for our city tour of Phuket Town.

Coconut Coffee Shop

Can someone please tell me how to cook a delicious half-boiled egg to perfection? We've tried it a couple times and we either undercooked it, or overcooked it. Now i really appreciate those perfect half-boiled eggs I get from kopitiams...

two eggs that did not get the chance to hatch into chicks!

This street that practically adjacent to our hotel is actually a heaven for boys! At night, it came alive with Marilyn Monroe, feathered "girls" and all sort of extravagant dressings that shout for attention. Their attraction are boys or s-he, also known as "shim" actually. For those who have, or prefer different type of entertainment (read: a penchant for boys) , this is it.

See how Mama San specifically listed "boys" in their signboard?

Our first stop is Kathu Waterfall! Initially, I wanted to go Tonsai Waterfall, but it was too far and we are racing with time, so we settled for Kathu Waterfall instead.

Oh, Kathu Waterfall has something against dog it seems. Because the drawing certainly cannot be pass off as cat, can it?






It was a beautiful place all right. Nice scenery. But yet, I was slightly dissappointed.



I mean, how can a waterfall be this "high"? Pictures of Tonsai Waterfall seems so magnificent and if compared to Kathu Waterfall, this seems like a baby waterfall instead...so if there's a chance in future, I shall like to go Tonsai Waterfall and see for myself^^




Next stop, a famous Thai Temple; Wat Chalong. A beautiful temple, excuisite architectural design and simply very Thai.

Wat (temple) Chalong

At Wat Chalong, they have this tradition of buring firecrackers (those red firecrackers we have during Chinese New Year) in that big erm..thing over there?


So the silent peace at Wat Chalong was constantly being broken by the thundering sound of firecrackers.

That's our taxi cum tour guide at the back there, smiling

We were rather intrigue with this local delicacy, a bamboo sticky rice which cost us 10-20 baht a stick.


Comes in original flavour and a red/black beans flavour. Tasted a bit bland, but the fragrant of the bamboo made up for it. It's a pretty good combination. From the looks of it, I guessed it gotta be boiled or steamed.




How many holy places in the world you know that has an ATM machine smacked right in the middle of the place?

I only knew Wat Chalong has. And I am surprise.





This Elephants were being worshipped by the locals. That board over there says: Temple Elephant Couple.


I don't know what it means. Can it be that the Elephants (can it be considered deity?) is like Cupid? or Aphrodite? Or Venus, God of Love? You know, give love, getting help for finding the "other halves" etc?




Another tradition they have is they prayed with lotus flower bud in their hand. I don't know what it means, but a unique Thai culture to me^^





After praying, they will paste the "golden leaf" (really, it seems like a golden patch of foil paper to me) onto either one of the three monks there, any part they like. Of course not any monks can sit there. There's a history to it but I didn't bother to find out haha paiseh!

And their donation box was no box. It's a safe, that turned into a donation "box"

This is almost like a shrine, where there's many Buddha statues and sleeping Buddhas statues. Then at the top of it, there's a holy place where all the precious "stones" were kept in beautiful containers.





According to what I've been told, this rare "jewel-like stones" were actually remnants of the monks who have been deseased, and I assumed cremated. Not everytime we can find it, but only those really pious monks who have done good deeds and have reached a higher level/status/enlightening that will have these "shiny jewel-like stones".




By lunch time, we went to Rang Hill to have a view of Phuket from higher ground. There's also an affordable cafe called Tun-Kha Cafe there, but we didn't get a chance to sampled any.





Instead, our tour guide bought us to this place. It's called Khon Thai 2 (if I spelled correctly that's it)

This place was awesome too. Too bad, the water receeded and we can only see patches of water here and there. I can imagined this place would look absolutely breath taking during dusk, where the tide is high and sun is dipping low on the horizon.




The price is slightly steeped though, but it's big in portion and it tasted wonderful so we didn't mind a bit. This meal cost us about 1300 bahts if I'm not wrong. By the end of the meal, our tummy was so stuffed that we left smiling.

That's the car that chauffeur us all day...

Ta-daa! FantaSea! A place that enables everyone to be kids once more. That place was colourful and everything was so grand! From their ticket counter to the show hall, everything was exquiste! No wonder the tickets don't come cheap. I can definitely imagined the maintenance cost of that place will not be low. Not to mentioned the workforce? There's almighty people working there itself!





This is our buffet dinner destination. Isn't it grand? It made us feel like we are royalties at once. They have successfully created a charming, grand kingdom of it's own in Kamala Beach. Aptly named FantaSea, because it is a fantasy come live!

Food Food FOOD!!!

Oklar, seriously, I think the food is not really that wonderful. In fact, the choice of selection is not as much as I've expected. In fact, my advice is, forgo the dinner buffet. Just eat a hefty portion of food right before you depart to FantaSea and go inside FantaSea to spend your time snapping photos instead! At 730pm, there'll be a White Tiger Show, which we missed, because we were eating dinner just then... Can't split into wto person, can we?


This is out seat. If we looked afront, we can see a few traditional Thai dancers outside, dancing away to the traditional music to entertain the guests.



Seriously, take my advice, eat before you go FantaSea, then spend all your time there to take photos. It's really beautiful (man-made beauty, of course) and you'll can't have enough of it. You can even shop there as they have lovely stuffs that cannot be found elsewhere.


According to the billboard I saw, it says; Miss FantaSea and You Miss Phuket!


Haha so how can I not succumbed to it? But it was worth it. Really.



More pictures can be found here

Phuket Day 1

Im so darn lazy to update here, especially dread the thought of uploading photos one by one in here...but then, as might as well move my lazy bum now...do something worthwhile with my time..


Ok here it is, I've arranged chronological order of my trip to Phuket. Hahahaha ya ya ya I'll bore you all with Phuket, if you haven't already, that's it ^^

an aerial view of Phi Phi Island, taken from the plane

When we stepped down from the plane, we were hoping that our hotel would provide shuttle from airport to hotel directly (read free of charge) but alas, we aren't that lucky. We've heard of a few tales that some people do get those service you know, so we were not irrational in hoping for that.


Since we don't have that luck, we chartered a taxi (cost 500bahts) to our hotel. Halfway through, our driver stopped at a Tour Agency (I should have known earlier that all these taxis have alliance with certain tour agencies) Since none of us ever been to Phuket, and also we want convenient instead of looking out for more tour agencies that may probably offer better package deal, we one shot settled all our tour trips with them.

The smooth talker, Teresa

Of course, we did haggled the price and everything, I mean, that's the joy of it isn't? The chance to bargain. We were quite happy with the end results all thanks to Wallace *wink wink* but we don't know how do we fare.


We actually made a joke of it in the car later on. We joked that perhaps we thought we are so clever in getting a considerable good bargain from her, and pretty satisfied with the price we paid. But back in the office, she might actually laugh her heads off with her colleagues and smirked at what a loser we are because we didn't get a good deal as we thought we did... Haha, but then, this is something that we would never know...

this where we stayed. Located strategically in the heart of everything, beach, food, nightlife you name it! All within walking distance.

Reached hotel finally, dumped all our belongings and we were in big mission. FOOD HUNTING!!!!!

We walked abit, and finally decided on this place


Don't be fooled into thinking dining at hotel would burn a big hole in your pocket because this hotel, is really affordable! This small restaurant offered really good local thai food in a really good price tag! Trust me, we were on budget trip so we don't simply go splurged our money nonsensically.




Somehow, they have a thing for bottled soft drinks. Everywhere we go, soft drinks usually come in a glass bottled form. Unlike Klang, soft drinks only comes in plastic bottled or aluminium can form haha!



our yummy yummy food! we have asparagus, pineapple fried rice, green curry and a superb Thai style omelet. Most food allowed the customers to pick their preferred meat, namely chicken, beef or seafood.




After that, we continued exploring Patong town as best as we could, entirely by feet^^


this signboard was probably the only thing that reminds me of tsunami. Else, Phuket barely had any traced of being hit by tsunami once. Oh, and another thing was they sell DVDs of tsunami hitting Phuket. Every DVD sellers will have this. Some even showed it on the tellies to attract customers.



We went in here....NOT! haha but the disco's name is overtly suggestive that I can't help but to post it here for a laugh hehehe...






Along the beach side, there's many of all this stone figures that are entirely too cute to be ignored. It comes in many shapes such as prawn, crab, human etc etc...







we also came across one beautiful lady, dress up to the nines gracefully sit in front of a seafood restaurant carving fruits into beautiful flowers. Food carving is also a local specialty there and they do offer classes for those who are interested to acquire this food carving skills^^



All the seafood for display and boy, were they gigantic or what? Some are so humongous that it's down right gross!

like this fish, it's actually rather scary if you take an up close look

Then we end the night with a drinkie session at one of the bars there. We simply chose Lava Bar, and we were not let down. Not one bit.







The cocktails there were relatively cheaper compared to KL, 100bahts for 1. Then the bar tender was quite entertaining with all his stunts, fire show etc. It kinda made us feel connected. At least they really tried to make the customers enjoyed their drink there.





See what I mean? Of course, all this are gimics that they probably have done thousands of times before, but for each new customers there, they will feel special, form some kind of bond and remembered it.






Oh noticed the girl on the far left? This the girl that convinced us that Lava Bar was good. She simply call herself, "A". She has a fun personality and having known some local ones like her (eg: the beartender, bar girl etc etc) was truly important. They can give you special price rate (read half price) for some other "shows" that you might have an interest on;p





For more photos on my trip, please click here