phuket (i)
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Hola there! I'm here to start on the very first entry on our trip to Phuket! I guess there's no way I'm going to post everything up in a single post(i can't possibly go through all 500++ photos now), so please come back again sometime soon okay!
All pictures were taken with my humble Olympus FE-280, and most photos had their brightness and contrasts tweaked. Hope you like them though :)
DAY I
Our flight was really early, at 5.50 a.m. Managed to get down to T1 with a lift from bf's brother. Check-in, yadah yadah, walk around, and it was time to board the plane. First time I'm taking such an early flight, & I thought the view outside our window was great.
i'm always blown away by such magnificent sights
Arrived in the land of smiles approximately an hour & 20 minutes later.
so picturesque hor
Queueing to get our passports stamped by the immigration officers at the airport in Phuket.
Made our ways out of the airport and found plenty of taxis for hire. Got one for 550Bahts (rate is 1SGD:20B); and the driver brought us down to his agency instead of the road on Patong Beach that we told him about when he learnt that we haven't made reservations for accommodation. Very nahia, but I guess we got a pretty alright deal with the agent. Ended up paying for 2 nights (1000B/night) for Chada Guest House, including 'breakfast', a hot water shower and air-con.
Settled down in our rooms and we made our ways out to the busy streets! Walked around a fair bit trying to look for some local food, and at the same time, explored the place a little.
floor tiles...
We stayed on Patong Beach, I haven't been to Kata or Karon Beach but from what I read about, Patong's supposed to be the most rara among them all. And there were just sooooo many caucasians in Phuket luh, Patong Beach especially. It's a common thing to see a caucasian middle-aged or old man with a Thai girl (or 2 for that matter) by his side on the streets. Yesyesyes, the sex trade is flourishing there, but I'll go into that again in the next entry huh..
Right, so we ended up at Mac's because I really wanted to try their pork burgers! If you don't already know(no offence), Thailand's mainstream religion would be Buddhism, and consumption of beef is against their major belief. Hence, they converted the beef patties.
my big mac
very scrumptious, as you can see... 60Baht, not exactly cheap
tried another one of their burgers; shrimp and it was yummyyyyy... I never thought that I'd be raving about Mcdonalds but yeah, the burgers here taste great.
Found this hawker in one of the corners of the many streets and we were the first tourist customers luh! The locals must have been thinking "wth are these 2 bloody tourists doing here man!" We got some wings and chicken hearts, they only turned out okay, not fantastic. shrugs.
And then there was another vendor who suddenly dropped by on her motor, serving glass noodles. Ordered a bowl and we stood at the road side to slurp up all that msg (quoted from bf) goodness.
food, glorious food!
the spoon's a little different from what we can find here. much shorter, but it doesn't show well in the picture. and yeah, I think the white strands look like beansprouts (taugey) too! haha!
Walked down to the beach front to see how we could spend our afternoon. Ended up paying 160Baht for 2 sunbeds (in a way, i guess we were paying to use the beach like what bf said), and another 1000Baht each for half an hour's worth of Jet-skiing! I think it's ridiculously expensive lah, and all the vendors are like, "all Patong beach same price", so we didn't manage to bring down the price.
2 of the vendors came and sat behind our jet-skis for a minute or two before they left us on our own. I started off damned worried that the jet-ski's going to flip over should I turn too quickly, lots of yelping and stuff, and I was like "noooo... don't go away yet please!" when the vendor came down from my jet-ski. Ended up running into a mooring rope from one of the longtail boats (which was actually quite dangerous), and the vendors were all shouting at me. It's hilarious now that I look back at myself.
Things turned much better once I got the hang of it, actually, it was a tremendous lot of fun! I guess having all that fun can justify that sum of money that we paid for the half hour. Fastest that I've ever gone anywhere on my own, and I actually went close to some of the sailboats berthed there so that I could take a look at them. Bf thinks that he's got a flair for jet-skiing, know what, I agree with that. Sort of. You go, bf!
pretty pretty
Headed back to the beach for a short burn-inducing session. Jet-ski also very tiring one you know...
yf went like, "you don't have very long and slim legs, you know..." that nehneh..
bf got us this! plus a cold sprite, shiok!
he's so sad because he can't really bite the kernels off the cob... haha... found another way to eat it though
Made our ways back to the hotel, thought maybe we'd sleep an hour or 2 before dinner-time comes, ended up sleeping all the way till the next morning instead. So that's it, no more pictures and it's the end of story for Day 1 people. Us, us. Haha..
to.be.continued.
It's 7.30 am now, I'll be off to bed already...!
5:51 AM
All pictures were taken with my humble Olympus FE-280, and most photos had their brightness and contrasts tweaked. Hope you like them though :)
DAY I
Our flight was really early, at 5.50 a.m. Managed to get down to T1 with a lift from bf's brother. Check-in, yadah yadah, walk around, and it was time to board the plane. First time I'm taking such an early flight, & I thought the view outside our window was great.
i'm always blown away by such magnificent sights
Arrived in the land of smiles approximately an hour & 20 minutes later.
so picturesque hor
Queueing to get our passports stamped by the immigration officers at the airport in Phuket.
Made our ways out of the airport and found plenty of taxis for hire. Got one for 550Bahts (rate is 1SGD:20B); and the driver brought us down to his agency instead of the road on Patong Beach that we told him about when he learnt that we haven't made reservations for accommodation. Very nahia, but I guess we got a pretty alright deal with the agent. Ended up paying for 2 nights (1000B/night) for Chada Guest House, including 'breakfast', a hot water shower and air-con.
Settled down in our rooms and we made our ways out to the busy streets! Walked around a fair bit trying to look for some local food, and at the same time, explored the place a little.
floor tiles...
We stayed on Patong Beach, I haven't been to Kata or Karon Beach but from what I read about, Patong's supposed to be the most rara among them all. And there were just sooooo many caucasians in Phuket luh, Patong Beach especially. It's a common thing to see a caucasian middle-aged or old man with a Thai girl (or 2 for that matter) by his side on the streets. Yesyesyes, the sex trade is flourishing there, but I'll go into that again in the next entry huh..
Right, so we ended up at Mac's because I really wanted to try their pork burgers! If you don't already know(no offence), Thailand's mainstream religion would be Buddhism, and consumption of beef is against their major belief. Hence, they converted the beef patties.
my big mac
very scrumptious, as you can see... 60Baht, not exactly cheap
tried another one of their burgers; shrimp and it was yummyyyyy... I never thought that I'd be raving about Mcdonalds but yeah, the burgers here taste great.
Found this hawker in one of the corners of the many streets and we were the first tourist customers luh! The locals must have been thinking "wth are these 2 bloody tourists doing here man!" We got some wings and chicken hearts, they only turned out okay, not fantastic. shrugs.
And then there was another vendor who suddenly dropped by on her motor, serving glass noodles. Ordered a bowl and we stood at the road side to slurp up all that msg (quoted from bf) goodness.
food, glorious food!
the spoon's a little different from what we can find here. much shorter, but it doesn't show well in the picture. and yeah, I think the white strands look like beansprouts (taugey) too! haha!
Walked down to the beach front to see how we could spend our afternoon. Ended up paying 160Baht for 2 sunbeds (in a way, i guess we were paying to use the beach like what bf said), and another 1000Baht each for half an hour's worth of Jet-skiing! I think it's ridiculously expensive lah, and all the vendors are like, "all Patong beach same price", so we didn't manage to bring down the price.
2 of the vendors came and sat behind our jet-skis for a minute or two before they left us on our own. I started off damned worried that the jet-ski's going to flip over should I turn too quickly, lots of yelping and stuff, and I was like "noooo... don't go away yet please!" when the vendor came down from my jet-ski. Ended up running into a mooring rope from one of the longtail boats (which was actually quite dangerous), and the vendors were all shouting at me. It's hilarious now that I look back at myself.
Things turned much better once I got the hang of it, actually, it was a tremendous lot of fun! I guess having all that fun can justify that sum of money that we paid for the half hour. Fastest that I've ever gone anywhere on my own, and I actually went close to some of the sailboats berthed there so that I could take a look at them. Bf thinks that he's got a flair for jet-skiing, know what, I agree with that. Sort of. You go, bf!
pretty pretty
Headed back to the beach for a short burn-inducing session. Jet-ski also very tiring one you know...
yf went like, "you don't have very long and slim legs, you know..." that nehneh..
bf got us this! plus a cold sprite, shiok!
he's so sad because he can't really bite the kernels off the cob... haha... found another way to eat it though
Made our ways back to the hotel, thought maybe we'd sleep an hour or 2 before dinner-time comes, ended up sleeping all the way till the next morning instead. So that's it, no more pictures and it's the end of story for Day 1 people. Us, us. Haha..
to.be.continued.
It's 7.30 am now, I'll be off to bed already...!
Labels: bf, happiness, photos, travel
5:51 AM
