Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Thailand - Day 2 Phuket

Got up early to leave for Don Meaung airport. There was not much to do except take a shower and go. This is when I started realizing that my companion took a little time to do stuff. Or maybe I am just too damn efficient! In any case, we checked out of the hotel and hailed a metered taxi. A taxi from the hotel would have cost us about 800 bhat. The driver did not know English – no problem – it was just the airport. After about 40 mins of driving, I was a little worried, as I was expecting the airport to come in that time, but it takes about one hour of constant driving. The roads were great and looking at my first view of Bangkok, it seemed like an organized, clean city.

Since we had a little bit of communication issue with the driver, we got dropped off at the domestic airport, so we took a little walk to the international side, all inside the same building.  Check in was super easy. The Air Asia counter was organized and efficient.  We had to just check in my one luggage. We had some time, so went upstairs to the wonderful food court. Prachi wanted to have a burger, so I also had some omelette at the Burger King. The food was a little more expensive at the airport than out of it. 

The boarding and flight was all good. One thing I noted about this aircraft was that all the seat backs and luggage compartments had ads on them of the same company. In other countries, these are usually all void of any writing.  The flight was okay. Did not have a window seat but could tell from peaking over that Phuket would be a pretty location.
Our luggage came almost as soon we reached the carousel. We got some tourist material (which we never had time to look once we reached the hotel). There were plenty of tour desks outside, we enquired about hotel transportation and tickets for FantaSea show.  We got it from one of the desks and also got a discount (180->150 each) on our hotel transportation – which was a van.  Taxi would have cost us a lot. The drive to the hotel took over one hour. Most of the drive was scenic, especially when we saw the coast. Phuket city is also very clean. The roads were all good.

Once we entered the touristy part of Phuket things were different. It was more crowded. And also because of the New year festival there was a lot of water throwing everywhere.  The streets were full of people, markets were all open. Everything seemed so alive. Our hotel was kind of inside a street – not easily accessible by a van. We dragged our luggage to the Inn Patong hotel and checked in. The receptionist mentioned that the credit card machine was broken, so I would have to pay by PayPal. Okay. And then she wanted either a 3000 Bhat/$100/passport deposit for the incidentals in the room. I gave the bhat. She could not understand why I would not give my passport.

The room was fine, but the bathroom was the tiniest I have seen ever. It was one seventh in proportion to the room. We had 3 hours to buy a swimsuit and sarong for me before the van for Fantasea would arrive to take us. Walking out was quite fun. We started off with a fruit shake each (found later that it should have been cheaper!).  I could see that not buying “stuff” would be hard. But self control helps! We walked up to the Bangla street and of course Prachi wanted to walk it…okay! The street is just bars on both sides and shopping. And because of Songkrat festival, lots of water! we got entirely soaked by the time with walked the street. It was fun. There was also the soap bubble dance going on…interesting. All in good fun – no rude behavior. We reached the beach – but no point going in the water, I would have felt worst in terms of my jeans getting wet.
Walked the Patong Beach road looking for swimsuit, finally found one – but not that great. It was a compromise. Found a sarong and a nice summer dress also.  All good (sort of). Walked back to the hotel and showered and got ready for Fantasea.
The drive was about 30 mins – so arrived about 6 pm. It just seemed a whole other place – so beautiful but alas artificial.  But really, I felt I was on vacation.  Got our tickets and then it was time for pictures of the outside decorations. There was music playing and of course there were so many people there. Prachi is totally into talking photos! She enjoys it. And she took some great videos.  There was a place to walk inside – all lit up! Went inside and that brought up another place – kind of like a theme park (no rides) – lots of places to get local art work and games for kids. So much going on.  As we wound down to the buffet, we crossed the “palace of the elephants” – really gorgeous building of elephant carvings.  We walked through all that to reach the buffet place. There was elephant riding possible. It was well lit place.
Dinner buffet place was huge! So much seating yet it was only half full.  There was food everywhere. They seated us next to Indian food – which was not that great, but there was some vegetarian Thai food which was much better. The desert was not that great. We enjoyed there for about an hour or more until it was time to go for the show at 9pm. They have a systematic way to taking phones away. Of course its all honor system – how would they know you still have it? As soon as we go through the entrance there were sets where people can take photos (which are sold for 300 bhat later). There were sets, elephants and people dressed up traditionally.
Our seating was not the best – it was on the 3rd tier – we could barely see the stage – don’t know why they even have that seating. Good for Prachi that she went to ask for a change of seating and we did get a much better seating – same pricing but much ahead. Don’t know why they did not give us that in the first place.

The show was amazing – all sorts of little pieces of shows and animals and so much theatrics. It was about an hour and fifteen minutes and essentially about how elephants are important in the Thai culture. Really great!

Even after the show was over, all the way back to the entry point, there were entertainers keeping people feeling good. At the exit, there were people there to help us get into the right bus to get us back to the right hotel. Really good organization and entertainment.

Got back to the hotel after 11 pm. Had to make sure we had stuff ready for the island trip tomorrow. And we have to also get up around 5 am to leave at 6am.

No comments:

Post a Comment